Why Congress deserves the credit for Slumdog Millionaire

Before anything else, heartiest congratulations to the entire team involved with Slumdog Millionaire for it's Oscar success.

Congress Spokesman for once said the right thing. The entire success of Slumdog Millionaire has to be credited to Congress. Come on, let's face it. Congress has ruled India (and not governed) for most of the years after Independence. And if we still see slums, poverty, depair around, it obviously Congress' 'conducive' growth policies. And not to forget 'inclusive' politics. They have ensured that poverty and slums grow and include people from each community and region. The only people they never included in this 'conducive' growth has been their leaders and their kins. So much for fair play!

The choice to be made now is - Another Oscar Congress style or real growth and development?

Youth Leadership - EMIs and Pink Slips

With more and more voters in ths 18-25 range, India is looking at a new dimension and that is 'young leadership'. But what is dished out as youth leadership is a worrisome trend. Let's look at some young leaders - Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Umar Abdullah, Priya Dutt, Milind Deora, Manvendra Singh, Dushyant Singh, Anurag Thakur, Dayanidhi Maran, Uddhav Thackeray, Supriya Sule, Ajit Pawar, Bharat Solanki and many more. One thing which strikes the mind immediately is that all these young leaders irrespecive of their parties are sons, daughters or kins of the politicians who have ruled the roost over the years. Now that begs a few questions

If they were not born as what they are, would they have reached there?
What if instead of being new vision, they are just the proverbial 'chip off the old block'?
Are they just ornamental or can they really bring in the change?
How many of them have so far demonstrated, in work and not in speeches, that they can make a difference?

That's where the shiver sets in and the questions asked are
Do I need a young leader who has never paid an EMI?
Do I need a young leader who has so far demonstrated no signs of freshness except that of the face?
Would these young leaders really understand how painful being unemployed is?
Can those who have got things on platter understand the struggles a common man has to go through?
Will we now never find a statesman like Atal Bihari Vajpayee rise from ranks of a common man?
Should those living as common public forget that they too have a say in policy making or hope to be a leader and just hand it over to dynasties to rule them?

And the biggest questions

Is our democracy moving back to monarchy?
And the answer is - To prevent this, one has to support whoever has the vision for a Better India, is accountable, clean and can deliver, irrespective of the age.

Why L K Advani is the most misunderstood politician in India?

The headline might raise the eyebrows of many who think that the man is the primary reason for the ‘communal divide’ in the country. While the media has been prompt to endorse the likes of Laloo, the railway minister over Laloo, the corrupt politician, they have been more unfair in their potrayal of Advani as the single faceted leader.

Though the media loves to hate the man, the media forgets that it was L K Advani who as the Information and Broadcasting Minister in Morarji Desai government had opened the media for an impartial working. He removed the draconian laws which clamped on media. The central censorship also was thrown in the dustbin during his ministerial regime. He was the man behind Prasar Bharati, which aimed at removing DD and AIR from the clutches of government and reduce government interference in media. Alas, media never hailed the man who in more ways than one is the reason why media started enjoying freedom.

Many call Rath Yatra as the start of division in the society. But a look into the history and one sees Bhivandi, Meerut, Baroda, Bhagalpur, Kanpur, Malegaon, Ahmedabad (the religious Jagannath yatra was always under attack in certain areas), post Hazratbal riots and many more riots across the country since 1947. And these were much before the Rath Yatra. The Rath Yatra if not anything else was a symbol of identity for the people who till then had seen minority appeasement or reservational appeasment as the common occurance. For the first time, the silent mass found a reason to assert its identity. So if few feel it was a divisive move, for many others it was an assertion of identity. So in more ways than one, it did open the secular v/s pseudo-secular debate in the country. And also it changed the uni-polar politics of India and people were given a credible alternative to Congress

Somnath Chaterjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani … what is common between all of them? They all have had a long innings in public life but haven’t been smeared with stigma of corruption. He was named once in 1996 in the fake Hawala case which then Congress government had foisted on most of the opposition leaders. Only L K Advani had the courage and personal integrity to quit electoral pursuits till his name was cleared. And mind you in 1996, he could have been the 13 day PM since he was the face of BJP. But it takes nothing less than sheer clean conscience to put principles before ambitions.

Many try to hide the ineffectiveness of current regime Home Ministers by saying that terror attacks happened during L K Advani’s ministerial stint too. But what they forget was that the action or reaction by the Indian government in all the cases was fast and decisive. I remember Diptosh Majumdar from CNN IBN comment on a chat after 26/11 that had L K Advani been the HM, he would have alteast tried things different and quickly and cut the time lag of decision making. Remember Akshardham and the promp action? Or even the trials after Parliament attack. No home minister can completely remove terror in this age but the least one can do is to inspire confidence that there will be steps and strong ones.

Self made man that he is, the last thing one can associate with him is that he can be remote controlled by different powers. That’s the strength both Atalji and Advaniji have. Their years of experience in public life have given them a stature that they will not bow down to extra-constitutional authorities and undermine the respect – individual or national.

There are many such points where L K Advani scores heavily, where his aachar (actions), vichaar (thoughts) and prachar (his voice) has kept country above others. But misunderstood man that he is, media and intelligentsia has painted him with only one brush and ignored the vast positives of his. Sit back and do some reading and thinking on him and maybe even the critics and cynics will see the positives.

To sum it up, I will borrow some words from Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni’s blog and say – It’s time to defocus on the ‘Vansh Bhogi’ (ones who live on the dynasty) and hail the ‘Karma Yogi’ (those who work on for country endlessly)

The liberal challenge

A couple of days back I got an email from a friend of mine which spoke about how it is necessary to weed out intolerance and religious fanaticism and saffron ideology from India. I could not help but laugh because the same friend 2 years ago was sending emails on why Da Vinci Code, both movie and the book should be banned in India. And she was happy when the movie was banned in few states. That’s where ‘liberals’ can not win the war against intolerance because of their own biases and intolerance.

Many such examples one can see. While Shiv Sena’s call for banning the book Rama’s Riddles is considered fanaticism, Dalit outcry and violence on Arun Shourie’s book ‘Demystifying False Gods’ does not evict the least of attention in media or liberal circles. Luckily both the books (brilliant books) have not seen the fate which Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses had to see or the writers had to undergo what Taslima Nasreen had to both in her country and in ‘secular’ India.

M F Hussein is painted as the victim of fundamentalism when he is under fire from Hindu right wing but then there is total silence when his movie Meenaxi is brought down from theatres on day 2 of release under pressure from the Muslim groups. And Hussein too was made to apologise for the same. Double standards or poetic justice?

Till the time the liberals don’t close out these cracks in their outcry, the likes of Muttalik, Raj Thackeray, John Dayal, Madani, Imam Bukhari will continue to prosper.

It’s time to leave our own biases aside and throw our own intolerances out. How many of us have not uttered the words ‘this should be banned’ or ‘that should be banned’? Because till the time we don’t do that, the only difference between us and the fanatics would be that they use violence and we can’t go down to those levels.