The coming general election is not just about who will win, which party will rule the country and who will be the Prime Minister. It’s an occasion for us to decide whether we want a new India, writes Neha Khator
Something is badly going wrong in this country and we don’t need any sixth sense to figure this out. There is just too much bad news all around. From rupee to economy, crime to corruption, everything is at its worst. Not to mention, we have politicians who are always on the stage giving performances more theatrical than Bollywood, aided to the maximum effect by a mainstream media which has turned into a noise machine.
Murder, rape and molestation cases continue to rise and shame India. Corruption today has brutally invaded almost every aspect of our lives. It is deeply entrenched, like a termite, eating our society and our conscience. What does it tell you about a country where a few men would readily allow faulty air traffic controllers to be built in exchange for a few extra bucks, not flinching even for a second at the thought of risking thousands of lives. Add to this, we have an economy that is free falling on the global ratings chart. The sense of frustration and helplessness is rising in the public when almost everything stinks of scam and corruption, when the corrupt have a free ride with no fear of law or punishment, when those guilty get clean chit and when the Government slaps right at your face and tells you it doesn’t care and threatens the honest with dire consequences.
To put it plainly: The country is in deep mess. Everything seems to be out of control. There couldn’t be a worse time than this to live in India but there also couldn’t be a better time to rebrand this country. And the first step towards rebranding the Indian story will be to rebrand the face that will represent it. For this, we will need to carefully decide whom we choose as our next leader because, as Mr Ratan Tata said recently, what this country most urgently needs is command, leadership and direction; and because we all know that things will only go down further if we don’t introspect now.
The parties have started readying their soldiers for ‘mission 2014’, and I think we too should be ready to make sense of the propaganda. Hence, I will be sharing with you my selection criteria that I will use to decide which person deserves to sit in the top chair. And no, it’s not based on which politician covers more area in rallies or how much he can shout on television mikes but rather on considerations that this country needs much more than that.
Where we are today has partly been blamed on the uninspiring Government that we have. Team Manmohan is a mix of highly-educated brains. An eminent economist and Oxford-Cambridge scholar himself, the Prime Minister has Harvard MBA Mr P Chidambaram, IIT-MIT alumnus Jairam Ramesh, Oxford alumnus Montek Singh Ahluwalia and an IIT-IIM(A)-MIT mix Raghuram Rajan as the new RBI Governor. Yet, watching this team in action has eroded the belief that an educated politician will do things differently and that electing a learned leader guarantees success and reform.
So, the first criterion is to get past the degrees and focus on what vision he/she has. As a guideline, look for qualities that those who fought for our freedom had. look for someone who acknowledges that there are real problems and offers real solutions and not just a fancy make-up. Someone who has the plan and is willing to root out corruption, establish law and order and get the economy back on track. Dismiss the one who just criticises his opponents because he obviously has got no answers himself. We need vision not derision.
Second, look for someone who aims for nation-building and not just finishing five years in office. Don’t fall for sops but go for one who plans to give you sound infrastructure, education and healthcare. We need the right environment for a healthy, educated workforce to grow. A strengthened economy will follow as a collateral advantage. Distributing free laptops or ration is not development, but it’s about making us dependent. So choose someone who offers a conclusive plan on how he/she aims to achieve it. How he/she plans to exploit our mass educated young population and use it with our vast natural resources to generate growth and employment. We need to think through the non-stop shrillness, stop cheering at the petty point-scoring and get to the real issues.
Have you ever looked closely at a group photo in world summitsIJ Do you know how the placement of leaders is decidedIJ It depends on the host nation, which pulls its friends to the center and keeps the rest outside. So while the US and Chinese leaders always stand in the front row and in the center, India’s Prime Minister always stands in the second row, often on the outer right. This is our true measure.
Before the 2014 election comes, we have to answer a simple question: 10 years down the line, where do we want to see India stand in the worldIJ Are we okay with the status quo and mediocre status or do we want moreIJ If you and I don’t think and vote, it will mean that a few people will again gain a lot more, but billions of us will have to settle for far less. We need to make sure that ‘Mission 2014’ is not about grabbing power but about raising India’s head. It’s time we rebrand India.