The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 19 June 2012

‘DRAMA-IN-BITTER-TASTE-WITH-ROTTEN-SMELL’ & THE ONLY HIGH-POINT

Indian politics has ceased to produce ethical, patient and visionary politicians, the ongoing ‘drama-in-bitter-taste-with-rotten-smell’ on the Presidential Election reaffirms the sorry state of affairs.  

Currently, when nothing ethical seems to have any say in the Indian politics, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the person who redefined the Indian Presidential office as an independent entity challenging the central government and defying Sonia Gandhi to follow ethics, has one again proved taller than all, being the only high-point of the ongoing electoral abyss. The man of word, the undisputed symbol of integrity and probity in personal and public life, presents an example that no politician of the day, even the half-politician Dr. Manmohan Singh, wants to emulate.

And he does it again.

The way he gracefully allowed his name as a possible candidate in the run-up to the Presidential Election 2012 and later decided not to contest the election after the game got even more murkier is a slap in the face of the insensitive bunch of the ruling lords, who have been more busy in establishing their rank supremacy over the voters who elect them than making India a uniformly developed nation. So they always come with silly acts enabling them to have preferential (read royal) treatments giving them the ego-satisfaction of a ruling monarch.  

Had it not been the indirect election method for the election of the Indian President, Kalam would have towered all, even the high-flying but controversial and failed finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s policy paralysis has presented before India the specter of dwindling economy and Pranab, in association with Manmohan Singh, is the one pillar in effecting this downward spiral.  

And that Pranab looks to become an unopposed (and not consensus) candidate in the presidential election. Another saga of political autocracy and manipulative politics by the Congress party!

Moves by the opposition parties only add to the bad taste. Now as Pranab has been installed in the race comfortably, the opposition is still burning the midnight oil in fielding its candidate. It is again is a tale of dirty politics as some of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) element look more than eager to support Pranab.

This is not a rosy situation at all. This is ominous.

Congress party’s attempt to give Pranab a walk-over in the presidential election is not very different from the Kannauj Lok Sabha bypoll. Dimple Yadav, Uttar Prdeash CM Akhilesh Yadav’s wife, was elected unopposed from the constituency. This would certainly have factored along with other unethical back-door deals between the Congress party and Mulayam Singh Yadav.

When Mamata Banarjee who had to bite the dust after Mulayam’s hard sting, wrote about horse trading and other malpractices being used in the current presidential election, it was not only an expression of frustration, but also indicative of voting manipulations as evident from stands of NDA partners like the Shiv Sena, jumping to support Pranab’s candidature. After all, Indian politics has had a proud history of horse trading.

In past, Mamata has rightly been at the centre of criticism for her antics and the dictatorial style of functioning after taking over as West Bengal chief minister. But in this case, till now, she has been able to maintain her stand, stoically sticking with Kalam even though Kalam has now refused it.

Indian politics has no defined low. It is already so debased that it can stoop to any level. We saw Mulayam’s expected U-turn and silly reasoning recently. Any possibility of Mamata acting like a lone warrior might well have a ploy in-built as the ‘brother-in-Pranab’ is making regular calls to the ‘sister-in-Mamata’.

Kalam has appreciated Mamata in the June 19, 2012 letter written to thank her for proposing his name and sticking to it. But Mamata deserves this letter only if she further sticks to her stand and mend her ways towards the ‘graceful politics’ of a determined and courageous leader ready to sacrifice for ethics as Dr. Kalam thinks. On multiple occasions, before her stand on the presidential elections, she has not been able to justify such phrases. Also, Mamata’s reply to him is just a routine one, looking heavy on words.

In Kalam’s spirit (and the ethical politics that India need), for her, office and short-term political gains should not matter. She should simply walk out of the UPA. But she is holding on it. Probably she wants to play martyr waiting for Sonia Gandhi to ask Trinamool Congress to leave the UPA so that she can go back to her electorate and can play the victim card.

Manipulative politics again!

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/