Musings of an unknown citizen - 22/04/2014


Campaign is in full swing for the next set of parliamentary constituencies. Claims and counter claims are in full swing. There is one more claimant for better governance now. Ms Jayalalithaa (Amma) of Tamil Nadu claims her government is better than the so called well advertised Gujarat model. She is one more in the long list of claimants for great governance. Unfortunately, Tamil Nadu may not be as great as it appears to be on paper. Unlike Gujarat there were severe and crippling power cuts in Tamil Nadu including Chennai. There was a promise by the current government at the time of assembly polls that the power problem will be resolved in 3 months once comes power. Power came to Amma but not to the people of Tamil Nadu. Whatever said and done, there is hardly any improvement in the infrastructure even in the capital city Chennai. The roads are still bad with very heavy water logging at the foot of the flyovers during the rainy season. The water levels will be around ankle high at the foot of flyovers even for a 10 minute rain. Half the roads are full of potholes and nobody interested in filling them. The lower strata of the society identifies itself both physically and emotionally with one of the two major parties and naturally expect their party to help their supports when in power. 

Apart from all those from Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh there is a really original and comical claim from the great former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Mr Chandra Babu Naidu. According to him in one of the public speeches he claimed his governance was model on which the Gurajat model was built (or predecessor / guiding light for Gujarat). Of course, one needs to take the words of Mr Naidu with a pinch of salt as he is now claiming everything good happened in Andhra Pradesh started during his time only. There was claim by him that outer ring road of Hyderabad was started during his time. I still remember the claims by him, his party and his friends like Eenadu newspaper about how this ORR was planned to help people from Congress government. Also there was a claim by his party in the TV commercials that there were no power cuts during his government which is an out and out incorrect statement. 

In Andhra and Telangana the potboiler alliance saga of Telugu Desam of Chandra Babu Naidu and BJP is still continuing. Like a masala Telugu movie (a  la one of Pawan Kalyan or Chiranjeevi movies) one can expect twists till the climax. Between my last post and now, both the parties quarreled over the alliance and patched up more out of necessity than anything else. It is said that Mr Naidu literally begged his way to be present in two meetings of Mr Modi  instead of one as originally planned for today. One of the news papers says that Mr Naidu literally begged and even blackmailed to get on to the stage along with Mr Modi. Sad to see people go to any extent to grab power.

Then there is the leader in who talks about evicting a family of other community from a house they purchased in Hindu dominant area in a Gujarat City. There is a law in Gujarat preventing distress sale of property to persons of other community. In effect the sale of property should be between only persons of same community is permitted in the declared disturbed areas in Gujarat which is mainly Ahmedabad. There was an amendment in 2010 to this bill giving extraordinary powers to District Collector in deciding such cases. The particular deal happened in Bhavnagar where this law does not apply. It is understood that this hindu leader made a strong pitch in the meeting to apply this law to entire Gujarat and advocated removal of the family by force (obviously illegal) if necessary. Looks like we are going back to the middle ages again.

This man was there on all occasions when there was a incident of communal nature happened be it the domolition of Babri Masjid, Kar seva in Ayodhya, Gujarat 2002 or even in some places after that in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The speeches are always vitriolic and half the time nonsensical. We cannot expect them to change but hope the people do not get into trap of these leaders.

There is no difference in behaviour of the leaders abroad in this respect. There is a leader in Russia who exhorted his aides to subject a lady journalist (that too a six month pregnant) to a violent rape just because she posed a question about Ukraine. 

Where are we going?

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