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 26 May 2016

MODI GOVT @ 2: A DAY OF STATISTICAL TALES

Today was basically a field days for spokespersons. They tried to cover as much length and breadth of this country as possible and they tried to speak as louder as they could so as to become audible (and visible) to media and social media eyes and ears and so on. What was put in action some days ago saw its top pitch today and will have its various notes in the days to come.

The biggest of them (in stature), held big sized rallies like the one held by Narendra Modi in Saharanpur.

Then there were extensions - from the ruling party - and from the opposition - selling and counter-selling achievements and allegations.

And then there were propped up or spontaneous splinter entities - on airwaves - blessing or bashing the two years of the Narendra Modi government.

Now, statistics tells what you want it to tell.

So, Narendra Modi, his spokespersons, other leaders of his party and his supporters have plenty to tell - from social empowerment - to introducing structural changes in infrastructure - to industrial turnaround - to internal and external security - to foreign policy.

Likewise, Narendra Modi and BJP's political rivals, including Modi's detractors, have as much in their kitty as they want to scatter - and they want to scatter it all.

So, if NDA and BJP's ministers, MPs and other leaders are busy holding meetings and rallies in different parts of countries, hard-selling their claimed achievements in these two years - the two years, that according to them, have changed India - political rivals and opposition, including Congress, Left Front, JDU, AAP and others are busy hard-selling their counterpoints - presenting point by point rebuttal of government's claims.

But the fact is - statistics doesn't really tell the stories that pull votes in times of elections - if figures are without facts - or even if figures are with flimsy facts. We all saw how NDA's 'India Shining' campaign crumbled in 2004. We saw how miserably the Manmohan Singh led UPA government failed in convincing people in 2014 Lok Sabha polls that it indeed had delivered on governance.

Like Modi has directed his ministers and party members to take their achievements to people, Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, too, had tried. The difference is - Modi is on the job right from the first year of his government while Manmohan Singh's government tried it as a desperate campaign measure in the face of a sky-high anti-incumbency after nine years in the office.

Obviously, those statistical tales didn't help Manmohan Singh and Congress then and the party was reduced to its lowest tally of 44 in the Lok Sabha. Narendra Modi must be having that in mind.

The biggest currency that Narendra Modi has, after two years in government, is - he still has no competition at his level. He is still the most popular politician, one of the most popular prime ministers and the gap between him and others who could pose as his rival to the prime minister's office in 2019 is comfortably wide. In fact, he is sitting at the top pretty comfortably.

After two years of Narendra Modi in 7RCR, the official residence of India's prime minister, India, still, has no political alternative to him.

But then, three years is a long time in India's political landscape. Anything can happen. Let's see which way the political tide turns (and soars) starting with the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early next year.

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