“Every Indian has a right
over everything that India has. From
this, he or she is free to weave his or her dreams. The India of tomorrow will have 125 crore
such dreams, and will be built on the same.
We will not only empower our citizens with the ability to dream, we will
enable them with the capacity to actualise their dreams.”
The passage is quoted
verbatim from the 2014
Election Manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party which went on to win
the elections. A year and a half is not
a period long enough for materialising such a grand vision. But it is a period long enough to move in the
direction, at least a few steps.
 |
| Modi at Sivagiri math in Kerala recently |
Instead of empowering the
dreams of the citizens, they are being driven deeper and deeper into a quagmire
of rising prices of food and communal dis-ease, in addition to all the old
problems of corruption in politics, unemployment, widening gap between the rich
and the poor, and so on. Worse, certain concepts
like secularism and tolerance have been villainised into bad words.
As Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes
in today’s Indian Express, BJP’s “hubris
and doublespeak” along with the garb of “victimhood” which it refuses to shed
even after winning a landslide majority in the elections jettisons any
possibility of letting the people dream, let alone materialising the party’s
own promised dreams.
I still dare to
dream. What is life without dreams
anyway?
My dream is not for a
utopian India. Mine is a simple
dream. Let me borrow Mr Mehta’s words
once more. I look forward to an India
where “the balance of hope and fear, trust and distrust, possibility and
constraint, progress and inertia tends in the positive direction.”
In plain words, it is a
simple dream which looks forward to an India where, if the great dreams of
empowering the citizens cannot be materialised, we can at least have an atmosphere
that does not stifle mutual trust among the people. If nothing can be done to prevent corruption,
to bring back the black money from the foreign banks as promised, or to bring
development to every citizen, at least let there be a healthy atmosphere of
trust and hope, cooperation and forward movement. Let India remain as a single nation of
diverse people living together in harmony.
You Said it.. I feel betrayed when I do not see the step towards the promised Utopia.
ReplyDeleteMany people feel helpless and betrayed. Let's hope the New Year will mark a change.
DeleteYou penned it well.
ReplyDeleteWaiting for 'Achhe din' indeed!
ReplyDeleteWith Kafkaesque hope...
DeleteWell! What else do you expect of a political manifesto? :D
ReplyDeleteTrue. Words are condemned to be hollow in politics.
Delete