The Supremacy of Opportunism - Soter

Published in the oHERALD on 8th August 2013 The Supremacy of Opportunism SOTER D’SOUZA Blowing dust into the eyes of the common citizen has begun. The blinding of public reason can only be expected to increase manifold in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Fishing in troubled waters, as always is the case, are the ‘Masters of Opportunism, Deception and Intolerance’ (MODI) who engineer discontentment through proxy and remain invisible. Election trackers are eager to project the MODI as a political alternative. This political caucus of MODI and the corporates is attempting to spin the common citizen out of the realm of rational decision making. The churning of the electorate towards a mob mentality has commenced. Goans have seen this happen in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha polls when they were promised a ‘parivartan’ free from mining, drugs, casinos and massage parlours; only to be told much later that the revenue generated from such socially destructive activities are vital for Goa’s economy. Just as ‘all is fair in love and war’, so it is in politics. Lying and duping the voters in an election does not attract disqualification under the Election Code of Conduct nor apparently does it amount to cheating under the IPC. There is consistent propaganda about widespread discontentment in urban India which could well turn the tables against the UPA-2 government. But when has urban India ever been in sync with rural India? MODI predominantly breed in urban centres. It was rural India that punctured the urban view of ‘India Shining’ in 2004. It is rural India that has thus far frustrated the attempts of divisive communal forces which are now hellbent on destroying the secular democratic fabric of this nation. These MODI consider common Indians as incompetent to understand the nuances of good governance for this country. They strongly believe ‘that a Lie repeated a hundred times becomes the Truth’. For the last sixty years, they have only been generating misinformation and hate against particular communities, politicians and political families by blaming them for the pathetic plight and problems of this country. Twisting facts and resorting to covert defamation of select political leaders and communities is the typical trait of the MODI. That is how the repeated stalling of Parliament and preventing of various Bills from being cleared is now marketed as a policy paralysis of UPA-2. The logic of the MODI is weird. Every opposite view expressed by citizens of this country is considered as being supportive of the Government. Not subscribing to their grand projection of the next prime minister immediately attracts accusations of being a paid voice of the government, of being ‘anti-Hindu’ and ‘anti-national’. The Muslims are expected to forget their 2000 dead during the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and move on, but the MODI are never known to have asked the Sikhs to leave behind the memories of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and move forward. The president of one political dispensation can go all the way to the US to plead for a visa for the chief minister of an Indian state, but no sooner the Indian MPs petition the US President, requesting him not to lift the visa ban, it becomes unacceptable and humiliating for the nation. The appeasement of minorities by one political party is dubbed as vote-bank politics, but a ‘Mission Salcete’ to woo minorities by another political party is hailed as ‘inclusive’ politics. The ability to silence dissenting voices in a debate by shouting them down and even resorting to personal abuse is considered their ‘right to opinion’, but exposing the lies and abuses of MODI becomes defamation. And to cut the long chain of contradictions short, truth for the MODI gets subjectively interpreted in accord with political and economic convenience. And as the MODI seeks to exploit issues like inflation and corruption in the hope of cornering the minds of Indians, they do not spell out measures on how they will tackle inflation or stem corruption. They project some good governance model only to the extent of economic development and conceal the status on basic characteristics of accountability, transparency, equity, participation, pluralism and the rule of law as listed in the UN classification of ‘Good Governance’. This nation knows how the Lokayukta in one state is not being appointed even after court verdicts upholding the intervention of the governor in this matter, and even as the Lokayukta is made inaccessible to the common man. This is proof on who actually is interested in reducing corruption in this country. What the MODI conceals from the public is how the price rise could also be linked to global trends and economic recession; how the Government’s compulsion to reduce subsidies on certain commodities or undertaking of certain controversial projects is actually dictated by international agencies like the World Bank and IMF. They will not inform the people how corruption is ingrained in the very systems of governance which begins with the price for a party ticket and the price of a voter during elections. The only difference is in the modus operandi: while some politicians are greedy enough and so distrustful of others that they accept cash directly, others much cleverer than them route it through their organisational cadre. The MODI thrives on public ignorance and rumours, and thus the intolerance to freedom of thought and expression, attempts to stall the spread of minority institutions and education in the English language in this country. The MODI deprives the people of this nation their right to information by preventing fullfledged debates in Parliament on what they portray as harmful policies of the UPA-2 government. The hopelessness of this country that the MODI seeks to politically exploit is not the failure of any single Government but more the collective mischief on economic policies and systems of governance that have been selfishly designed and manipulated by the entire political class ever since the independence of this country. The actual reasons for the problems this country faces today were in reality forewarned by Mahatma Gandhi in 1898 in his treatise “Hind Swaraj”. These are problems that the MODI are aware that they too are in no position to fix but only exploit to their own advantage and convenience. What the MODI conceals from the hapless voter is that ultimately this is a Democracy ‘of Opportunists’ and ‘for Capitalists’ that unconsciously gets endorsed ‘by the People’ every five years. http://www.oheraldo.in/newscategory/Opinions/14