Life & Beyond : THE POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVE VARANASI NEEDS

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.

Sunday, 11 May 2014

THE POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVE VARANASI NEEDS

GENERAL ELECTIONS 2014

Varanasi has been a neglected constituency. The city has seen almost no development in the last 25 years.

The civic infrastructure is in mess. It is tainting its spiritual aspect, the lifeline of Banaras and the pivot of Indian Spiritualism.

There are no roads or there are roads trying to find the smooth patches on the continuum of concrete rubble that creates a hazy kaleidoscope when mixed with the dust found on every walkable stretch of the city, a panorama that obstructs the view and chokes the senses.

Varanasi is, technically, a metro city now for many years and the basic civic amenities that should be for a metro city that is also a global tourism attraction - piped water, piped gas, 24-hour electricity, a proper city transport, an efficient administration for health and educational facilities, a modern airport – these basic requirements are a far cry for the city that is one of the major contributors to India’s tourism earning; a city that is educational, spiritual and cultural hub; a city that is one of the very few places in the world having seen the shades of human civilization since the human civilization began.

And Varanasi’s tourism potential owes its genesis to the Ganga and Lord Shiva and the in-built religious and spiritual ecosystem around it.

But, the Ganga is as neglected as the whole city has been. Even an ardent devotee thinks twice before taking the dip in the holy water that flows through the ghats of Varanasi.

And politicians have been responsible for it.

Apart from the brief stints of the governments of Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh has had SP or BSP governments in the last 25 years or so.

But the city has chosen to continue with the BJP. Congress did win in 2004 but it was more of a BJP loss than a Congress win. The Varanasi parliamentary constituency has shown no interest in the two regional parties in these 25 years making the UP governments largely apathetic to the city’s concerns.

And the resultant attitude of the ruling political class has pushed the city to a development abyss.

To come out of it, keeping in mind the fact that there is still an SP government in Lucknow that is to continue till 2017, the city needs a political representative who can bring it back to the path of development; a political representative who is determined and resourceful enough to bypass the obstructions posed by the government of Lucknow.