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.

Thursday 12 February 2015

MODI THEN, KEJRIWAL NOW

These eight months proved out to be long enough  for anti-incumbency against the BJP led central government, that was seen ruling Delhi through Lieutenant-Governor, to build to the extent that it led to a complete rout for the party's prospects in the 2015 assembly polls.

In the 70-member Delhi assembly, BJP, the largest party of the 2013 assembly polls that bettered its show in 2014 Lok Sabha polls winning all seven seats and improving its vote share by 15% to 48% and leading in 60 of the 70 assembly segments, was reduced to just three seats.

And the Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal advantage played a major role in it.

AAP had begun its ground work a long before the L-G gave nod to the polls. Kejriwal's sincere act of apology was finding its takers through his outreach efforts.

He was the most popular CM Candidate in Delhi even when BJP was clearly ahead of AAP in seat projections, survey after survey. And as the polls approached, increased intensity of his efforts took him far higher on popularity scale.

It was further helped by absence of any credible name against him as the CM nominee. Congress had none. BJP had none before January 12. After BJP paradropped her, Kiran Bedi did reach near to him with her announcement but soon Kejriwal widened the gap.

It all made Kejriwal the central  target of political rivals. The mighty BJP was there, lock, stock and barrel, encircling him, trying to engulf him. Kejriwal was also in the fire-line of the down and out Congress.  

Something that was the case with Narendra  Modi in the Lok Sabha polls when he was the central target of the political rivals.

It did help Modi then, making him a true mass phenomenon.

It helped Kejriwal now, in the assembly polls, making him the Delhi's mass leader beyond the perception of popularity scales.

In the Lok Sabha polls, everyone was targeting Modi when he had no direct rival. And Modi had the most intensive campaigning schedule mapping length and breadth of the country. Every development helped him get added scales of visibility - the media time, visibility on airwaves, presence in print media, in top slots trending on Internet and social media. And as the it was coming from a fractured group of rivals including Congress that was sweating from the heat of a sky-high anti-incumbency, their words and acts only helped Modi positively.

In these assembly polls, in desperation, fuelled by the 'below expectation crowds' in Modi's first rally, and Kiran Bedi's rapidly diminishing impact, BJP started ratcheting up attacks on Kejriwal.  BJP failed to realize the harm its negative campaign was doing and kept on doing the same thing with Arvind Kejriwal that opponents did with Modi then, targeting him with the might of BJP's campaigning machinery that looked to sweep Delhi.

BJP failed to realize that it needed to keep this most important factor in check - the psychology, the inclination of youth, middle classes and poor-  to support the one whom they can identify with - and Kejriwal has been certainly identifiable for them - to be in solidarity with the one who is taking on the mightier ones - and AAP is no match for BJP and Congress in terms of resources and experience.

Yes, BJP and Narendra Modi were not poor in resources or experience in the Lok Sabha polls, but Modi's political past and the allegations of Gujarat riots made him the easy target of every other political outfit that he exploited well with his humble background. The tea-seller on the course to change the future of India and its people - being hounded by the political opponents - because of his poor background and because of his backward caste lineage -  was a big crowd puller - and a big psychological connect for the impoverished masses.

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