Derailment in the long run - Soter

Article published in Herald on 8th January 2014 SOTER D’SOUZA The unexpected performance of the Aam Admi Party (AAP) in the recently concluded Delhi Assembly elections has for once taken the seasoned political forces by surprise. The issue of corruption that was orchestrated over the last one year or more, by what obviously has been a politician-corporate nexus to arouse mass hysteria around corruption and split the secular votes for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, now appears to have spun out of control. The carefully scripted and sponsored incitement of public anger against the UPA-II government by proxy was actually meant to create a launch pad for the corporate’s prince charming, a former tea vendor turned politician, to be the next Prime Minister of this country. The master manipulators of political opinion had least expected that the aam admi induced with hyper activism could hijack and change the political discourse altogether. This has now thrown the over confident PM in waiting into a quandary and compelling his promoters to re-invent him if he has to stay in the race. The attention has simply swung away from the Gujarat model towards a Delhi model and the crafty Congress Party has smartly taken its revenge by frustrating its opponents. This has now left the baffled opposition contemplating the idea of projecting a prototype of ‘Kejriwal’ instead of a ‘Modi’ to woo the electorate. Rumours are rife about the architect of the so-claimed ‘Goa parivartan’ being injected into the race for the top job. The jolted and confused political opponents of the UPA government now appear to be gradually lowering the noise decibels on the issue of corruption and attempting to divert the aam admi’s hysteria to the issue of ‘unity’. The ‘Run for Unity’ that has been designed in Gujarat looks more of an attempt to engage the hyperactive aam admi and divert his energies before they further derail the roadmap for installing a totalitarian regime in the country. What this sudden realization about the need for unity almost seventy years after independence actually implies is unclear, because we have been united enough to propel communal riots that caused a partition of this country, brought down the Babri Masjid and incited a genocide in 2002. We have continued to be united in successfully eliminating or terrorising politically inconvenient sections of society by engineering fake encounters or driving them into a corner to establish our exclusive political power zones. Whether this latest edition of a ‘run for unity’ is about uniting all citizens of India or exclusive sections of society, remains the question. But such gimmicks always have takers from amongst the very same aam admi who never seems to be exhausted of running from pillar to post in government offices or scrambling to make ends meet and afford the politicians an opportunity to live at public cost. A society afflicted by consumerism gets bored fairly quickly with the existing variety of products. It gets fascinated with novelty. Now the life of a product or its long term impact is no more a concern for the consumer and neither are the mounting piles of toxic waste. A magic broom that promises to drive away the depression of this consumer citizen by ensuring a corruption free governance and free power and water can definitely expect to be a hit in political markets. So the recent ‘AAP’ political virus can only be expected to attain epidemic proportions in the run up to the 2014 elections. Probably, even some corporate agents from the IIMs and IITs will be enthused with this new magic broom. It took just forty-eight hours for the AAP to give free water and electricity, which is nothing more than taking the very same aam admi’s tax money and paying the private companies, which would have been bad governance when out of government. Taking a clue from this, AAP’s competitors are now taking the liberty to go a step further by promising to abolish Income Tax and Service Tax if voted to power. This will definitely be music to the ears of the gullible ‘aam admi’ who has been happy chasing rainbows since 1947. But do governments survive on love and fresh air? In other words, will the aam admi be fleeced for the luxuries of the ‘khas admi’ through unseen and uniformly imposed taxes? We seem to be moving through frightening times of political madness. All this while, it was the poor class that was accused of being vote banks and electing corrupt and criminal politicians. We are now confronted with a vote bank of a young, arrogant and reckless upper and middle class that is politically inexperienced, if not ignorant, concerned more with purchasing power to drive the market economy and rights without responsibilities rather than being concerned with safeguarding the secular, democratic fabric and developing a self-reliant nation. Thinking minds are left wondering how voting in new faces into government will bring positive change while systems that are oppressive and defiant of natural laws remain intact. How can corruption get eradicated when human development parameters in the present economic regime are about how many crorepatis are generated every year, what is the per capita income of the consumer and how many projects get the nod of the Environment Ministry irrespective of the ecological damage or displacement of the aam admi? These were the contradictions in our political and economic model that Mahatma Gandhi, Dr J C Kumarrappa, Jayprakash Narayan and some modern day economists constantly question. A corporate controlled media and government has successfully muzzled the alternate opinion on this economy and kept the aam admi in a cyber cloud, far from the reality on the ground. Ours is more a case where the complaining citizen abets and resents the problems at the same time. This nation has always been in a hurry. When Gandhiji had proposed the disbanding of the Indian National Congress after achieving independence and for all first rung leaders to go into the villages to build the moral fabric of the society, he was isolated as nobody was in a mood to listen. Just as there is huge following for fake spiritual healers that offer instant solutions, the same holds good for the politically desperate aam admi who runs after fake political messiahs who take this nation on a merry-go-around similar to the promised parivartan of 2012 in Goa. And how long will it take before AAP is also sent to the scrapyard in exchange for something more glamourous? What this nation now desperately appears to need before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls is not a ‘Run for Unity’ but a ‘Run for Sanity’.