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 29 July 2014

TWO MONTHS OF MIXED DEVELOPMENTS, BUT THE SIGNALS SHOULD BE CLEAR

It’s been mixed two months. And May 26 to July 30 – cannot be the timeframe to judge a government’s acts.

Whatever have been there - the developments in these two months - cannot be the elements of writing the script for the coming five years.

But, then, in Indian politics, where morality has become an unknown entity, even one week is more than enough to give the opponents the arsenal to attack when the acts fall short of the promises made.

And it has been the case.

In the run-up of the General Elections 2014, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) had run an intensive campaign, and Narendra Modi had overwritten every established norm of election campaigning by his hardwork.

And central to his hardwork was his promise of delivering India from the bad governance of the United Progressive Alliance government. He pitched for making India Congress free. He gave the Indians the dream of good days.

Now, anyone who could think analytically was not looking at this promise as a panacea, a miracle to change all that was bad in the excising sociopolitical system. It was always going to be a long-term process.

But the problem is, such analytical minds are not even .001% of the Indian electorate who voted the BJP led National Democratic Alliance government to the power with an overwhelming majority.

They won’t understand the intricacies of the financial quagmire that the Manmohan Singh government has the pushed the nation in.

They need delivery of the promise and the beginning was to be made with sending out the signals about it.

Yes, electoral and political history of India tells us the Indian voter has been very patient, even turning a blind eye to his exploitation by the political class.


But, the situation is rapidly changing now – the clear majority to the BJP is a testimony to that – it tells the Indian voter is thinking in decisive terms now to vote beyond the practiced electoral planks of caste, sectarian and ideological affiliations – had it not been the case, the BJP, which was largely a Hindi-belt political party with North India presence (Karnataka being an exception for different reasons), could not have won the clear majority on its own, and could not have got votes from almost every part of the country – and that should be the ‘wake-up call’, the warning for the political class – because the voter bought what Narendra Modi was trying to sell – and the voter can easily switch to the next shop next time – the NDA loss in 2004 polls, the UPA win in 2009 polls and the UPA’s humiliating loss in 2014 polls – should be more than enough to tell where the air is blowing.

Yes, the patience of the Indian voter who has voted Narendra Modi in to the prime minister’s office cannot run out in just two months – but its needs signals to sustain its allegiance – because Narendra Modi needs time to deliver – that could run in years.

And the signals have been unclear so far. They are ambiguous. They are of mixed nature, with the bouquet having some highly commendable acts and some positive developments but overpowered and outmaneuvered with rising prices and the talks of ‘bitter pills’ to reform the economy.

Yes, the economy reform, that is a must, but the voter needs unorthodox efforts from the government as well. The political class needs to look sincere of practicing what it expects from the people. The central and the state governments need to be austere, need to reduce tax burden on energy and oil products and need to look pro-people while reducing the social security net by removing subsidies. It needs a gradual approach where the voter also gets avenues to better his life, to become financially more independent.

Government is talking of reducing subsidies and ‘bitter pills’ but it is not talking on how it would deliver the people out of poverty and subsidy-dependence – and this messaging is bad for the government – Narendra Modi needs to work on it – the voters who have voted for the government need to get the signals from him and his government.

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