I hope the patriot inside everyone of us doesn’t take any offence by this. I should warn though, that all of my fellow country men who consider ourselves a die hard patriot should think over this first before reacting. It wont be pleasant but make no mistake, it is all true. Our beloved country is addressed by many fancy adjectives. For a change, I thought of giving it another sobriquet. A rather true one for a change. “India – The great land of hypocrisy.” Over the years I have grown up to boast, be proud and defend my country against criticisms especially by outsiders. This I have done diligently and still continue to do so. The truth however is starkly different. We are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. We gloriously pretend to be one of the best nations and people in the world. We are anything but close to that. Anything you think of, any topic, values, system, society, people and what not under the sun, one thing is largely common. And that is hypocrisy. Be it the purpose of government. Be it societal norms. Be it education. Be it India being poor. Or even, be it us having the feeling of being Indian. The world’s largest democracy. Of the people, by the people and for the people. Our democracy is surely by the people but definitely not of the people or for the people. We have truck loads of societal norms which anyone uses as per their convenience. More interesting is the fact that it is used not for someone’s advantage but to suppress, oppress others. What values we have. Love marriage is still a taboo in majority of the sections. It is hilarious that as kids we all are taught to not trust strangers, only to grow up and be forced to sleep with a stranger by the way of arranged marriages. There is nothing wrong with arranged marriages, but for those who want to be with someone they know and love, I dont understand how those people marrying would violate the norms or bring shame to the so called family. And every “family” talks about their “honor” in a way as if they are the royal families and reputation of the whole nation or kingdom is dependent on their decisions. Similarly patriotism and the feeling of being Indian. There are only two occasions when every one in this “great” country feels an Indian first before feeling being a Hindu/Muslim etc or feeling being from a particular region or caste. Those two occasions are: 1) When India wins a cricket tournament or 2) when pakistani terrorists attack India. There is no other instance when people feel Indian first. And on top of that we talk about unity in diversity. People from bihar are labelled as “mazdoor” people from northeast are labelled as something else, people from all regions mock people from other regions. Then we say there is lot of racism in western world against Indians. We should first get our house in order before pointing fingers. I can go on and on with this but I will close this by giving everyone reading this a brain teaser. Think of anything or issues like I have mentioned and if you pay attention, you will realise that maybe god is omnipresent or not no one can say but in our country hypocrisy is omnipresent and we do nothing about it.
May 29, 2014
May 24, 2014
Why India needs a Kejriwal as much as it needs Modi?
2:40 PM
Posted by Kunal
boss, choices, current, debate, future, kejriwal, leader, media, modi, options, politics, reality, second chance
1 comment
First of all I would like to clear this at the outset. I am a vehement Modi supporter. Never I have put in so much effort to circle the electoral wards multiple times to get my voter id. What the hell, I never even tried to get registered ever. But, this time I did because I wanted to vote for Modi and I did. So to all my friends who are also Modi supporters, which will be in majority, please understand that this is not taking anything away from Modi. Nor I am suggesting Kejriwal at the helm of Indian state instead of Modi. This a totally parallel perspective if you may say about many other things in politics other than just electing the national government or the prime minister. To all of my those friends, please read ahead if you want to open up a different avenue in the more general line of thought prevailing these days.
Here is a guy who is as qualified and educated as probably half of the legislative assembly combined. Some facts which either have been forgotten or are not known for various reasons. Probably only things people know or still remember are that he is from IIT K and worked as Joint Commissioner for IRS. He did not take up any plush overseas job offers at IIT because he wanted to be in India and join Civil Services so that he could contribute to the country. Here are some more
And they did get it. Even I personally do not support all their moves and decisions when they came in power and especially when he resigned. But the point is, here is a person who got 49 days and was perilously hanging on bare threads of congress support. May be they should have invested more in long term policies and should not have been too hasty about everything, but, they made that mistake. Probably because they needed to show something instantly so that in case there are re elections people would know that they intended to work. So do we want to hang this guy for trying what mistake he did. It is ironical that we, the all educated, knowledgeable and objective Indians were just sitting in our homes and probably going on trips on election day for the past 60 years when Congress has been ravaging this country and have allowed them to come back again and again to pillage India and we are hell bent on sending this guy to the guillotines for 49 days and some other days when he was not in power.
As for the media, almost everyone is bought and they show only what benefits one party. It is the propaganda of other parties to crush this one. But should we not think why? Why other parties want to crush it. Because he is a threat to them. Yes, I agree that by what I see in today's media, he has done some things maybe to stay in news. But they already brand him a dramebaz. Let the viewers decide whether he is a dramebaz or not. Your job is to report incidents as they happen and not give the judgement whether it is drama or not.
We need him for all his tantrums and mistakes. Are we always going to toggle between BJP and Congress when it comes to politics? Both of them by the way are no better than the other in corruption. No party is purely clean. We need Kejriwal because if he is crushed by the bigger powers then there will again be a time when people will be fed up of these old parties and no common man would dare to stand up because they can crush a person who eventually became CM and has qualifications of the highest order then who else would be able to stand up. So we need him, and need him to perform. People need to have the belief that people from outside politics can stand up and reach power if they have the will to change things. If people do not have that belief, it is not good for our county.
Right now, he might seem like the problem child in a family. But many times it is these problem children who are misunderstood the most. They just have a different way of thinking. Right or wrong time will tell.
Many of my friends have parents. So what you do when your child throws tantrums. Sometimes you ignore. Sometimes you lovingly try to calm them down and sometimes you chide them. But you do not abandon them because you know they are just children and will learn. Well, AAP is a child in this gamut pf politics. They will learn too. And trust me, if we consider ourselves intelligent, many of us did not make it to IITs or Civil Services. Kejriwal did. So he is not dumb. He will learn. And we should hope he does good work, but for that he needs a second chance. Not everyone gets a second chance but except for some rare gruesome cases, everyone definitely deserves a second chance. How we feel when we make a mistake and are denied a second chance when we could have got one maybe from the boss, or parents or friends? If we can give second and third and god knows how many chances to congress why not just one more chance to Kejriwal. A lot more is at stake with his second than what we might be able to see right now. Some of them I have talked about above in this post. What worse will happen? Everything is already at the lowest levels. Say we give him one more chance against the bigger powers, and he does worse. Well we can happily go back to the old who anyways have been screwing everything from the beginning. And say he does well given that he will know he does not have to take support, he is stable for 5 years, well nothing better. Rather than being cynical we should be optimistic with the new option. Leaders give second chances. Bosses don't. Don't be a boss. Be a leader. New kid on the block, give him a second chance and you never know he might pleasantly surprise you many fold. If he doesn't, well it simply didn't work. Do not believe everything being said in the media. It is all what the bigger parties want us to see so that they are the absolute rulers with no competition. I know from friends close to all this 'drama' in Delhi that media is not what we think it is and it is not showing what we think is happening.
We need Kejriwal as much as we need Modi. Atleast till we have given him a second chance.
Here is a guy who is as qualified and educated as probably half of the legislative assembly combined. Some facts which either have been forgotten or are not known for various reasons. Probably only things people know or still remember are that he is from IIT K and worked as Joint Commissioner for IRS. He did not take up any plush overseas job offers at IIT because he wanted to be in India and join Civil Services so that he could contribute to the country. Here are some more
- He is known for his efforts to enact and implement the Right to Information Act (RTI) at the grassroots level
- In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership recognising his involvement in a grassroots movement (Parivartan) using right-to-information legislation in a campaign against corruption.
- The same year, after resigning from the IRS, he donated his Magsaysay award money as a corpus fund to found the Public Cause Research Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO)
And they did get it. Even I personally do not support all their moves and decisions when they came in power and especially when he resigned. But the point is, here is a person who got 49 days and was perilously hanging on bare threads of congress support. May be they should have invested more in long term policies and should not have been too hasty about everything, but, they made that mistake. Probably because they needed to show something instantly so that in case there are re elections people would know that they intended to work. So do we want to hang this guy for trying what mistake he did. It is ironical that we, the all educated, knowledgeable and objective Indians were just sitting in our homes and probably going on trips on election day for the past 60 years when Congress has been ravaging this country and have allowed them to come back again and again to pillage India and we are hell bent on sending this guy to the guillotines for 49 days and some other days when he was not in power.
As for the media, almost everyone is bought and they show only what benefits one party. It is the propaganda of other parties to crush this one. But should we not think why? Why other parties want to crush it. Because he is a threat to them. Yes, I agree that by what I see in today's media, he has done some things maybe to stay in news. But they already brand him a dramebaz. Let the viewers decide whether he is a dramebaz or not. Your job is to report incidents as they happen and not give the judgement whether it is drama or not.
We need him for all his tantrums and mistakes. Are we always going to toggle between BJP and Congress when it comes to politics? Both of them by the way are no better than the other in corruption. No party is purely clean. We need Kejriwal because if he is crushed by the bigger powers then there will again be a time when people will be fed up of these old parties and no common man would dare to stand up because they can crush a person who eventually became CM and has qualifications of the highest order then who else would be able to stand up. So we need him, and need him to perform. People need to have the belief that people from outside politics can stand up and reach power if they have the will to change things. If people do not have that belief, it is not good for our county.
Right now, he might seem like the problem child in a family. But many times it is these problem children who are misunderstood the most. They just have a different way of thinking. Right or wrong time will tell.
Many of my friends have parents. So what you do when your child throws tantrums. Sometimes you ignore. Sometimes you lovingly try to calm them down and sometimes you chide them. But you do not abandon them because you know they are just children and will learn. Well, AAP is a child in this gamut pf politics. They will learn too. And trust me, if we consider ourselves intelligent, many of us did not make it to IITs or Civil Services. Kejriwal did. So he is not dumb. He will learn. And we should hope he does good work, but for that he needs a second chance. Not everyone gets a second chance but except for some rare gruesome cases, everyone definitely deserves a second chance. How we feel when we make a mistake and are denied a second chance when we could have got one maybe from the boss, or parents or friends? If we can give second and third and god knows how many chances to congress why not just one more chance to Kejriwal. A lot more is at stake with his second than what we might be able to see right now. Some of them I have talked about above in this post. What worse will happen? Everything is already at the lowest levels. Say we give him one more chance against the bigger powers, and he does worse. Well we can happily go back to the old who anyways have been screwing everything from the beginning. And say he does well given that he will know he does not have to take support, he is stable for 5 years, well nothing better. Rather than being cynical we should be optimistic with the new option. Leaders give second chances. Bosses don't. Don't be a boss. Be a leader. New kid on the block, give him a second chance and you never know he might pleasantly surprise you many fold. If he doesn't, well it simply didn't work. Do not believe everything being said in the media. It is all what the bigger parties want us to see so that they are the absolute rulers with no competition. I know from friends close to all this 'drama' in Delhi that media is not what we think it is and it is not showing what we think is happening.
We need Kejriwal as much as we need Modi. Atleast till we have given him a second chance.