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.

Wednesday 25 June 2014

MARATHA AND MUSLIM QUOTA IN MAHARASHTRA: NO EFFORTS TO LEARN LESSONS

Today, in a desperate effort, intended to score points of the votebank appeasement politics, like its character has been/has become, the grand old party of India having its origin in late 19th Century, the Congress party, did what was expected from it.

And in doing so, not learning lessons from the recent poll drubbings, they tell us they are yet to go into some serious thinking mode on what led them to this historic low. Yes, the loss was written and widely analysed but no one could gauge it was going to be so humiliating.

The assembly polls in the state are due later this year and the Maharashtra government, led by the Congress-NCP combine, is in imminent danger of losing its hold on the state power corridors as well. In the recently held Lok Sabha polls, the ruling combine could win only 6 seats out of 48.


And instead of putting serious thoughts into ‘whys’ of this political gloom for them to address the ‘real’ issues before the polls, they are still busy in devising cosmetic measures hoping they would be able to tackle the sky-high anti-incumbency, somehow, like the Congress led UPA government in Centre had ‘envisioned’.

And proposing reservation quota for the targeted votebanks has been among the most practiced cosmetic measures of the Congress party in the recent political history of India, irrespective of the fact it has failed to deliver most of the times.

Maharashtra government today proposed 16% reservation for Maratha people and 5% for Muslims. It is nothing but a poll sop, to go to these votebanks, claiming their right on the votes ‘in lieu of’ this largesse that is going to remain on papers.

Tomorrow, some PIL will be filed and the High Court will give stay order as has been the case in many other such cases, where states breach the 50% reservation ceiling. Also, the Indian Constitution is clear that reservation cannot be given on religious basis. And no one can say how this ‘Maratha reservation card’ is going to play, in courts, and in the electoral arena.  

Even the politicians proposing the reservation quota in such arbitrary ways realize it but being politicians, they don’t care. They just need some talking points to exploit the electoral sentiments.

In the recent political history, every such political attempt by the Congress party has backfired. Attempts to introduce the Muslim reservation (before assembly and Lok Sabha polls) have been blocked by the Supreme Court regularly and have not translated into electoral victories for the Congress party.  Giving minority status to Jains was just a filler, a symbolic step, never important electorally, but it was yet another window into the pre-poll mentality of the Congress party. Another electoral ploy of giving reservation to Jats just before the Lok Sabha polls proved a dud. The poll results showed the Jats voted for the BJP, in Haryana, in Rajasthan and in Western Uttar Pradesh.

And yet, they don’t change. No lessons learnt yet. No efforts to learn lessons yet. 

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