On the brink of a phenomenon
Barring the period where the British ruled India, our country has been a mythical and mysterious concept. When the British ruled, they managed to reduce us to a painful reality. The best part about independence was that we could go back to being the concept that is India. A concept 'whose time had come'. This is a concept which had been just around the corner. I guess by the devil's design that corner also had a dance bar and a seekh kabab joint and we know what these kind of distractions can do. Cut to 16th May 2014 and we are now seemingly at the brink of this multiple orgasm which has been held back for more than 60 years. The first installment saw the nation heave a collective outburst where we gave Mr. Modi (not BJP) the mandate to lead us to the second installment which promises to deliver a bigger and louder sigh.
Ludicrous analogy apart, there are many messages that have been released during this period of polling, campaigning, mud-slinging and generally unwarranted tamasha. I think we would have got the point even if the verbosity had been far lesser but I do not speak for the scores of people for whom the point is never made until it is incendiary. Some of the messages I received:
It was never Rahul Gandhi who decided he would become Rahul Gandhi.
Dynastic politics is not any different from family business and consistency of vision, insight and rigour cannot be taken for granted. In many of his interviews, Rahul Gandhi has constantly invoked his circumstances - whether it was his grandmother's assassination or his father's - to be the sole determinant of his mental make-up. It is for a psychologist to analyse but to me it goes some way to show how politics has been shoved down his throat and is now stuck like a fish bone. What Narendra Modi has done is to give him that quasi-CPR which will now allow Rahul Gandhi to re-think whether he should eat fish again and if yes, then which kind works best for him. What Rahul Gandhi had was just a surname. In my reading, he did not have the will (atleast it wasnt passionately evident) to lead the party and neither did he have the credentials. He was doing what his mother told him to do was best for him. In the interest of thorough objectivity, it is interesting to understand the psyche of a boy who loses his father in the most unfortunate way possible and has been surrounded by a seemingly headstrong woman in his sister and a mother who cannot relate to anything or anyone around her apart from her children. The degree of influence that this must have had in the way he made decisions is phenomenal. Some reports have said he left a flourishing career to join the INC and if that is true, then it made itself evident in the pictures that were flashing all over the media where the sense of relief that glistened on his face was in stark contrast to the exhausted and intense look on Modi's face. And that is a look that Mr. Modi will continue to carry through his time as PM as he helps to deliver the second installment of the ludicrous analogy I started with.
The voters this time were bloody smart.
The mandate to the BJP to form the government as the single largest party has come after 3 decades. Essentially what this means is that a generation has to pass for wisdom to flow. Assuming that we have taken the right decision to get the BJP (and not the BJP+) into power, this wisdom makes Narendra Modi PM. To my mind, this generation of voters has been smart enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. These are voters who have moved from passive viewers to active commentators as they have passed from one phase of life to another. From gloom to promise of prosperity to prosperity and then back to semi-gloom, the proliferation of digital media, opening up of new forms of expression and the emergence of a more bold, argumentative and debating (sometime combative) text in media has helped this generation make an informed choice. The emergence of the AAP with the second/third largest vote share in constituencies where they contested is a testimonial to this public awareness that will eventually show possibly now in 2024. At the end of the day, the choices to the people were limited. While the anti-incumbency situation was much like other similar years, the resounding message was that people were willing to give not just their vote but their faith for possibly one last time. If there is a time that the concept of India can take off, it 'seems' to be now.
Narendra Modi will not call the shots.
Our worst fears will come alive if Mr. Modi doesnt emerge as the one taking the meaty decisions. I hate to be a naysayer but that is something that naturally emerges from a critic like me. If what we get to read in the media is what we have to believe, then the rise of Modi in the party ranks is just a story that is written much better than that written by the INC. Just like the INC reminds me of a family business, the BJP reminds me of a large professionally run corporate. Both have their corridors of power and the guys calling the shots. The BJP got lucky as they had a credential backed face while the INC didn't. That doesn't mean that he will take all the decisions. With the massive likelihood that the BJP will actually go ahead without the NDA partners, more decisions will be taken by a handful people while Mr. Modi continues to be the face of the execution. That Modi, who started as the 'backroom boy' and a sevak in the sangh will never be allowed to become bigger than the very people who gave him the stage for the world to see his apparent aura. In closed door meetings, he may still have to say yes sir, rather Ji Advani' Ji but in the public he will still be able to spin it off as a decision that carries the best interests of the people.
In sum, now there are 2 things to wait for:
1. Dr. Manmohan Singh's autobiography where we will know who the hell really screwed up, because I know he didn't.
2. The second burst of that mutliple orgasm that is India. I don't think we can hold it back any longer.
Ludicrous analogy apart, there are many messages that have been released during this period of polling, campaigning, mud-slinging and generally unwarranted tamasha. I think we would have got the point even if the verbosity had been far lesser but I do not speak for the scores of people for whom the point is never made until it is incendiary. Some of the messages I received:
It was never Rahul Gandhi who decided he would become Rahul Gandhi.
Dynastic politics is not any different from family business and consistency of vision, insight and rigour cannot be taken for granted. In many of his interviews, Rahul Gandhi has constantly invoked his circumstances - whether it was his grandmother's assassination or his father's - to be the sole determinant of his mental make-up. It is for a psychologist to analyse but to me it goes some way to show how politics has been shoved down his throat and is now stuck like a fish bone. What Narendra Modi has done is to give him that quasi-CPR which will now allow Rahul Gandhi to re-think whether he should eat fish again and if yes, then which kind works best for him. What Rahul Gandhi had was just a surname. In my reading, he did not have the will (atleast it wasnt passionately evident) to lead the party and neither did he have the credentials. He was doing what his mother told him to do was best for him. In the interest of thorough objectivity, it is interesting to understand the psyche of a boy who loses his father in the most unfortunate way possible and has been surrounded by a seemingly headstrong woman in his sister and a mother who cannot relate to anything or anyone around her apart from her children. The degree of influence that this must have had in the way he made decisions is phenomenal. Some reports have said he left a flourishing career to join the INC and if that is true, then it made itself evident in the pictures that were flashing all over the media where the sense of relief that glistened on his face was in stark contrast to the exhausted and intense look on Modi's face. And that is a look that Mr. Modi will continue to carry through his time as PM as he helps to deliver the second installment of the ludicrous analogy I started with.
The voters this time were bloody smart.
The mandate to the BJP to form the government as the single largest party has come after 3 decades. Essentially what this means is that a generation has to pass for wisdom to flow. Assuming that we have taken the right decision to get the BJP (and not the BJP+) into power, this wisdom makes Narendra Modi PM. To my mind, this generation of voters has been smart enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. These are voters who have moved from passive viewers to active commentators as they have passed from one phase of life to another. From gloom to promise of prosperity to prosperity and then back to semi-gloom, the proliferation of digital media, opening up of new forms of expression and the emergence of a more bold, argumentative and debating (sometime combative) text in media has helped this generation make an informed choice. The emergence of the AAP with the second/third largest vote share in constituencies where they contested is a testimonial to this public awareness that will eventually show possibly now in 2024. At the end of the day, the choices to the people were limited. While the anti-incumbency situation was much like other similar years, the resounding message was that people were willing to give not just their vote but their faith for possibly one last time. If there is a time that the concept of India can take off, it 'seems' to be now.
Narendra Modi will not call the shots.
Our worst fears will come alive if Mr. Modi doesnt emerge as the one taking the meaty decisions. I hate to be a naysayer but that is something that naturally emerges from a critic like me. If what we get to read in the media is what we have to believe, then the rise of Modi in the party ranks is just a story that is written much better than that written by the INC. Just like the INC reminds me of a family business, the BJP reminds me of a large professionally run corporate. Both have their corridors of power and the guys calling the shots. The BJP got lucky as they had a credential backed face while the INC didn't. That doesn't mean that he will take all the decisions. With the massive likelihood that the BJP will actually go ahead without the NDA partners, more decisions will be taken by a handful people while Mr. Modi continues to be the face of the execution. That Modi, who started as the 'backroom boy' and a sevak in the sangh will never be allowed to become bigger than the very people who gave him the stage for the world to see his apparent aura. In closed door meetings, he may still have to say yes sir, rather Ji Advani' Ji but in the public he will still be able to spin it off as a decision that carries the best interests of the people.
In sum, now there are 2 things to wait for:
1. Dr. Manmohan Singh's autobiography where we will know who the hell really screwed up, because I know he didn't.
2. The second burst of that mutliple orgasm that is India. I don't think we can hold it back any longer.
posted by Saurabh at
11:37 PM
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