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 16 August 2012

15TH AUGUST 2012: EMPTY SPEECHES, HOLLOW PROMISES – MANMOHAN’S WAND OF WORDS – NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT IT

Now Manmohanji, we need to be linguistically superlative to explore apt superlatives for your increasingly repetitive and lifeless speeches and fake promises.

Manmohan Singh’s speech yesterday was dull and routine as usual, inspiring nothing but sharp reaction on some more empty promises, the way he has been doing in past, especially in the last three years, the period of economic and political mismanagement that has seen country’s socioeconomic indicators taking a nosedive.  Inflation has remained high; prices are skyrocketing irrespective of the inflation data; GDP growth has touched the nine-year low; and every major forecast is declaring tougher days ahead.

In place of inspiring confidence, Manmohan has now started epitomizing growing apathy of the ruling class. Apart from bizarre and insensitive statements of his brethren on sensitive issues like price rise, and corruption, Manmohan, too, has regularly used his trademark catchphrase ‘I have no magic wand’ to shrug off responsibility.

His speeches have become so same and so lifeless that one cannot expect something like honest introspection though he used the word in his speech yesterday. He spoke of tough times attributing it to the national and international factors and advocated reforms yet he and his party make compromises every other day.

Yes, we can give him some points on accepting two facts that his government has been ignoring for a long time – these are tough times for India and national factors, ‘too’, are responsible for the policy mess India is in now. But mere these words can never justify the scale of policy paralysis that his government has pushed the country in.

Beyond this, he goes on to beat the drum of his achievements (a questionable and debatable term for his government now)  like he does every year on completing one more year in the office; like his does on every Independence Day – presenting ‘his India growth story’ with statistical overdose that sound like utopian in present day India. No need to take pain in listing them out here.

He says almost 100 per cent of the Indian villages are electrified now. Can you take it? Merely installing poles and wires won’t do anything when there is no electricity supply for days and weeks. 10-15 hours of daily outage has become routine in towns and cities across the country.  The country saw two worst Grid failures recently, proof enough for miserable power infrastructure of India.

He says now almost 100 per cent children of the age-group 6-14 are enrolled in schools. Now there has been a big question mark here owing to the ‘high enrolments but abysmally low attendance’ scenario in India. Quality of education is a farfetched thing with still high dropout rates.

He boasts of MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee) and NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) schemes – the fact is these two schemes have become dens of absolute corruption running in thousands of crores, ruining every other positive aspect of it. Except few customary steps under extreme media scrutiny, we are yet to see a comprehensive crackdown.

He didn’t forget to thank the farmers for their hard-work as the food reserves are good enough to meet the demand in a drought year but didn’t mention even a word about farmer suicides.

Comfortably numb he has been and he chosen to act same even this time. He tried to shift the major share of the blame on global Economy scenario for India’s ongoing Economy crisis. But the condition has so worsened thanks to his government’s own wrongs that it has been scrutinized intensely in the national and international media. The pressure of intense scrutiny might have forced him to do a face-saving by naming domestic factors, too, as reason for India’s crisis of the day.

His speech had no words about handling issues like corruption, black money and price rise but fleeting references. No one knows what amusement the UPA government gets when any of its representative talks about Lok Sabha passing the Lokpal & Lokayukta Bill. This bill is nothing but another sham from the political class aimed at preserving its interests first.

The way he has been ignoring critical issues in his speeches in the last three years ruins anything he has earned in the name of his personal integrity.

Thankfully, we didn’t see another hara-kiri come into play when Manmohan Singh chosen not to announce the ill-conceived ‘Har Hath Mein Phone’ scheme. But no one can say if it is a late-dawned wisdom or political opportunism of biding time as the parliament session is on and given the way the scheme has drawn criticism, it would give the Opposition a fresh arsenal to attack the government in the Parliament.

For how long we would be given fake promises that his government is working hard to improve the Economy scenario? Manmohanji, did you realize you now sound so ineffective that people have started ignoring your persona all together. Certainly, you would never have thought to leave such a legacy when you took the reign in 2004.

But that looks a certainty now.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister – please have mercy on your dear countrymen, brothers, sisters and dear children.

The current state of affairs in India needs some real stuff now – beyond fake promises and lip-service.

To continue..

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