Since Rahul Gandhi and his epic interview seems to be trending today, right time for me to share an article I had written a couple of months back - 2014 – Why I Prefer NaMo over RaGa? Scams, corruption, blasts, terror, riots, traffic, inflation, unemployment are some of the words that have become the daily fodder for most average Indian stomachs. Progress, growth, development, evolution are part of the rich man’s buffet that is unaffordable to 90% of the country’s population. Hi there! Meet me, an average, frustrated young Indian. With high hopes and aspirations to make it big, every day I wake up with this unrelenting vigor to go out there and conquer the world. But by the time the day dawns on me and I come back home and crash on my bed, more often than not, I am left pondering over the question – ‘Does this country have the capability to be able to harness and develop my dreams within its realms?’ ‘Sare jahan se acha, Hindustan hamara’, a phrase that is rammed down the throats of young nippers even before they understand the nuances of words. These nippers are made to live in the illusion that they are a part of the greatest civilization to have graced this planet. Their reality distortion field is finally broken when the umbilical cord that ties them to their parents is cut and they are left to fend off for themselves and survive on their own wits in the big bad world. It is then that they realize that far from being the greatest country on this planet, our Hindustan has been crippled since ages because of a defunct governing machinery that fails to provide even the basic roti, kapda aur makan to its natives. This realization initiates a process that sets into motion a series of frustrations arising out of everything and anything that happens in their ecosphere. The saddest part about the whole situation is that majority of us are familiar with the problems. Yet, all we do is participate in blame game rather than find concrete solutions to the problems, mostly because the solutions point fingers directly at us- we ourselves are the biggest problems. You ask how? Well, take this example. Majority of us, the so called intelligentsia will debate for hours as to how the political class is stooping to new lows with the passage of every second. But never are we found standing in the voting queues for a couple of hours, awaiting our turns to cast our valuable vote and help the candidate, who we think presents the best chance to take this country forward, win. We then argues that none of the candidates are worthy of running for office. Now, that is a different problem altogether. Eradicating that will require a revamp of the whole system, right from its grass root levels, which is a herculean task and requires a substantial amount of time to set right decades of wrong. Right now, what we need to do is to make calculated choices and put our intelligentsia to work. We need to press our fore-fingers on those voting machines and choose the ‘best among the worst’. The choices that lay before us are clear – #Narendra Modi ( #NaMo) or #Rahul Gandhi ( #RaGa ). Before I place forward my arguments as to which candidate I feel is more apt to lead our country for the next 5 years, I need to make it crystal clear that I am as apolitical as one can get – I despise all political parties alike and if it were to me- I would make majority of the politicians stand in a queue and shoot them for leading my country towards desolation. So the choices I make are solely based on my perception and a bit of instincts and are not out of my prejudice towards anyone. So coming back to the candidates – one is the so called ‘youth icon’, who is carrying forward the political legacy of the first family of the country while other is the ‘embodiment of development’, who rose through the ranks from being a chaiwallah to becoming one of the longest serving active Chief Minister of a state. Since the country’s majority population is below 35 years, let us start off with our 43 year old youth icon – RaGa. To think of it, besides being his father’s son and his grandmother’s grandson and his great grandfather’s great grandson, there is nothing much to write home about him. His political lineage overshadows his political achievements (not that there is much to write about in any case). He has made trips to Bihar, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and everywhere Congress has suffered great losses. What’s worse, some of his speeches in the recent past haven’t evoked much confidence either. All they have help improve is the sales of urban dictionary as the aam admi needs to understand what Jupiter’s Escape Velocity means and how poverty is a state of mind and not a state of the stomach. The biggest disappointment for me, when it comes to RaGa has been his silence over important matters. We never heard from him during the Jan Lokpal movement (he did speak but after the issue had escalated well and truly beyond the government’s hands); he was nowhere to be seen during the Delhi rape case; and he only called the ordinance to allow convicts into the parliament as ‘nonsense’ after it had been passed by his party. The claims from his party that he is a reluctant leader and not power savvy are, to simply put it, ridiculous. If that were to be the case then he has got no business to be where he is and should never have chosen public service as a career. Pro-activeness and dynamism is something the youth wants to see in their leader as they have now lost patience at having to look at a leader who always has the ‘mute’ button switched on his channel 24×7 (Sardarji! THEEK HAIN!) Talking about pro-activeness and dynamism, brings me to the other candidate – the ‘chaiwallah’, who claims to be (or at least his PR machinery does) the torch-bearer of both these virtues. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say NaMo? Godhra riots. Ok. What is the second thing that comes to your mind when I say NaMo? Fake encounters. Let’s give it one last try. What is the third thing that comes to your mind when I say NaMo? RSS (read Saffron Terror) NaMo is no saint. If we were to unearth the graves that he has dug to build his political career, we would be surprised (to put it in kind terms). But at the same time, if we were to sidestep these ‘glitches’ and look beyond them for a while, we also have a NaMo who has led Gujarat onto sustained development. We see a leader who is not shy of speaking out his mind and pulls every trick in the book to entice investors and businessman alike and manipulates them into including Gujarat in their vision of progress. Sly, dynamic and shrewd to the fore, he knows what is required to get things done. He keeps his friends close and enemies closer and ensures that his PR machinery works round the clock to make sure his detractors are kept in check and can be countered by the aapdu suvarna Gujarat story whenever Godhra is up for discussion. Damage control is what he has been doing for over a decade now and judging by the fact that he won his third consecutive term as CM, yet again with a majority, he is doing it well. In an ideal world, neither would have a standing in the political class, forget about setting one foot at the top of the hierarchy. But then, it is a flawed world we live in. And given the circumstance, I would rather risk handling over my ‘fragile’ country into the hands of ‘blood tainted chaiwallah’ rather than a ‘reluctant shehzada’ for the simple argument that, NaMo would extend the courtesy to the people to ask him questions and maybe provide answers to most rather than be in a state of prolonged muteness. With this, I rest my argument. For me, in 2014, it has to be NaMo. He very well might be the flawed leader that this great, yet imperfect country needs.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 15:53:51 +0000
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