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 15 December 2015

AAP: THE RAPID DECLINE

It has become quite an expected spectacle - recurring regularly - and every next time, it sounds more phoney than its previous role-play - entire gamut of AAP leaders (Aam Aadmi Party) coming in a huddle whenever there is any political or (administrative development) that goes against them or whenever anyone from AAP, including Arvind Kejriwal, is targeted - and launching a coordinated verbal tirade in full force against whosoever they feel is coming in their way. 

In their way - now that may be interpreted in varied ways - and in the prevailing political circumstances - everyone, irrespective of the side of the controversy he or she is - feels that he or she is entitled to have his or her own way - and that the way he or she reacts is right and politically correct. 

But what is interesting and (morally demotivating) in the case of AAP is that it is a party that had claimed skies on corruption while canvassing for votes but has done everything that is a sheer antithesis to that and that will ultimately prove its nemesis. 

AAP must not forget that its rapid, miraculous political rise may well see a rapid decline if it keeps on betraying the stakeholders who voted for it - the common men. 

And the party faces this clear and present danger - now in most clear and unequivocal terms. 

AAP has presented before its voters a face that is largely elitist - making mockery of the values that it claimed enshrined its organizational constitution and even the name (Aam Aadmi Party - the party of the common men). 

And the people Arvind Kejriwal and his party have defended vehemently, including his tainted former law minister Jitender Singh Tomar, have proved him wrong, time and again. 

The party that had begged for another chance in Delhi and the party that had begged another chance in the name of the 'common man', has openly (and shamelessly) embraced a VIP culture that includes many hostile, 'un-common-manesque' incidents including the recent move of hiking MLA salary by 400% and the now 'famous flip-flop on the Jan Lokpal Bill'. 

When Delhi's voters had given AAP another chance after its act of betrayal in February 2014 when Arvind Kejriwal had deserted Delhi to milk his prime-ministerial ambitions in Varanasi, what was on their mind was a regime and its governance based on concerns for ordinary folks in the street - and not what were the routine political promises. 

In a sense, the unique strength that AAP had was its 'inexperience' in the political office and in the 'political culture'. 

But after AAP was given another chance by the electorate in Delhi in February 2015, we came to know the AAP members were inexperienced not in just 'political culture and political office', but they also lacked the conviction to 'engage in constructive politics'. 

And their 'unwillingness' to engage in 'constructive politics and meaningful governance' to gain the experience that will be 'morally, socially and politically correct' is proving a nightmare now. 

Since their second inauguration in the national capital, AAP has been in news for wrong reasons mostly. The party has preferred to engage in confrontational politics with the Union Government, and buoyed by the experience of playing the 'victim card' in the assembly polls, it has decided to present itself as 'facing brunt of its political opponents' and as the sole champion of the 'cause of the common man' in Indian politics. 

But the party has consistently failed to go beyond mere rhetoric and words. The party, so far, has shown a shameless penchant in 'not transforming' its words (promises) into action. And as the time is passing, people are seeing through this charade. 

After all, if they can show door to BJP in just nine months (through the Union Government rule in Delhi by its representative, the Lieutenant-Governor), why can't they do the same with AAP? Yes, it is true that AAP is safely home, in Delhi assembly, for five years, but that cannot prevent people from making opinion against it. 

The sad thing is, the party is not realizing it - and is thus increasingly getting irrelevant to the 'cause of the politics of change' India desperately needs. 

Instead, they are busy in playing dirty politics - using abusive words like 'coward and psychopath for the elected prime minister of India' - and making such a language synonymous with their political culture - using abusive and confrontational language in their day to day politics. With all merits, we can safely say that AAP spokespersons sound most sceptical and senseless in any ongoing political debate these days - ever since the party got another chance in Delhi. 

And at times, when they are caught red handed and on the other side of the law, like it happened in Jitender Tomar case or in today's case of raid against the Principal Secretary of Arvind Kerjriwal, their 'we are right, come what may' attitude deteriorates into a panic response that doesn't consider anything and just spews and spews verbal volleys of distracted and misplaced opinions (or rants to be precise). 

By their acts so far, they are proving the Delhi electorate wrong.

Well, this is certainly not political anarchy, the way political anarchy is known as! 

Featured Image Courtesy: Arvind Kejriwal's Twitter page 

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