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.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

SECOND GENERATION POLITICIANS OF INDIA: WHERE IS WALK-THE-TALK ACT?

Midst all the talks of Bharat Mata, youth power and ideas and the beehive diligence, India remains a dark reminder of a story that took on to the wrong path before it could see the right one when it began in 1947.

And there is no need to go back in the history to analyse it. Almost all of the second generation politicians today are the products of the political dynasties. Having grown up and seen affluent lives, a clear disconnect from the ground reality of India can easily be seen in their attitudes. They talk big. They talk insensitive. They talk meaningless. Rarely, we find them walking the talk. A look at the recent political scene is self-explanatory.

Among the high-talking points these days is the Maharashtra drought. The industrialized state of the western India is facing the worst drought in 40 years.

Yet, Deputy Chief Minister of the state, Ajit Pawar, a product of the dynasty politics in India (being from the powerful Pawar family), breaches every level of insensitivity with his ‘urinate in the dams’ remark while commenting the drought situation. According to a Times of India report, during a rally in Pune, the politician, while trying to slight the fast of a farmer, Prabhakar Deshmukh from the drought hit Solapur district, said, “He has been fasting for the last 55 days. If there is no water in the dam, how can we release it? Should we urinate into it? If there is no water to drink, even urination is not possible”.

By saying so, he has slighted the humanity, he has slighted his own existence, and he has slighted an already debased Indian political scene even more. It was unethical. It was audacious when procedures were mocked to reinstate Pawar as the Deputy CM after he was forced to resign for his role in the alleged 70,000 irrigation scam of Maharashtra. Even at this moment of human crisis, Pawar has been alleged to divert water in dams (supposed to go to the people) to the industries when people in drought-hit areas are reeling under the water scarcity.

Even, the other prominent second generation politicians in Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray, are the products of the dynasty politics. Okay, being from a political dynasty is not a crime but what about the brand of divisive politics they are practicing?

Let’s come to the national scene.


The youth power of India is in vogue – not in terms of productivity but in speechmaking of the politicians like Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. It is so because they form the largest chunk of the votebank and can swing the all important ‘who wins or who loses’ outcome in the upcoming Lok Sabha election.

Rahul Gandhi has been very specific about promoting youth though there are very few grassroots leaders in his youth brigade who are without any political inheritance or who are not from the affluent background. And almost none of that kind (the grassroots) has reached to the level of the policymaking bodies like the Union Cabinet. Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora, Deepender Hooda and Rahul himself, all are products of the dynasty politics. Unfortunately (for India), the list is long and is getting longer.

Why Rahul Gandhi’s speeches have become so repetitive?
Why his speeches only talk of questions?
Why he never talks about solutions in concrete, tangible terms?

It is because, the ‘disconnect’ is still there. It reflects in Rahul’s reluctance in taking the political centrestage on vital issues like the Lokpal Bill or the Delhi gangrape that agitate the whole country.

What India needs to come out of its dark is a leader who is sensitive and who cares for and practices a life of probity. But the way the governments and the administrative machineries were manipulated to give clean chit to Robert Vadra in controversial land deals puts valid question marks on Rahul’s intentions. Okay, Vadra might be clean and what he has amassed (wealth) might be due to his business acumen (and luck), but being from the family that has been at the political forefront of the independent India, Vadra needed to come out clean in a ‘clean manner’ if Rahul means what all he is talking about, be it in Jaipur when he was elected vice president of the Congress party or at the CII annual general meeting speech in Delhi. But that is not being done. That is just not happening.

Let’s pan across the country to see the second generation leaders who claim the states now (and some of them can and will claim the nation later).

To continue..

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