Skip to main content

Yet another pipedream




Prime Minister Modi’s demand from his ministers that they should not wallow in luxury, instead should focus on delivery and implementation of schemes is as welcome as his promises like Swachh Bharat, eradication of corruption, elimination of poverty, depositing ₹15 lakh in every Indian’s bank account by bringing back all the black money from abroad, and so on.  Will this latest demand make any difference to India?  The other promises have made no difference whatever so far.

A lot of money is collected in the name of Swachh Bharat cess and Bharat has remained as filthy as it ever was.  Thousands of crores of rupees accrued by way of the cess.  What happened to all that money?  At least some people could have got jobs if they were employed to clean up the filth using those funds. 

When it comes to corruption, PM Modi’s BJP stands one notch above all the other parties in India.  There are more cases of corruption against BJP people than against those of any other party.  In Kerala where I live the BJP leaders have been accused of historical corruption charges especially because BJP does not even have foothold in the state. Even before the party could win more than a seat electorally in the state, the party members have started amassing wealth.

The poor are being eliminated through strategic measures such as what happened in Yogi’s UP recently with the children. That is BJP style eradication of poverty.   Eliminate the poor and poverty will automatically be eradicated.  After Narendra Modi came to power, the unemployment rates in the country have risen skyhigh.  No one bothers.  Because those who can bother have been bought off.  Bharat has become a country of buying and selling.  You and I are just commodities in the cow kingdom.

Black money! Don’t even mention the ₹15 lakh we were supposed to get according to the electoral promises of Modi.  That was just rhetoric. 

Like the present rhetoric about ministers giving up opulence.  These ministers are people who have lived opulently for years by swindling the lower caste people and stealing their little savings.  Now the whole of Bharat is a low caste, untouchable (unswachh) nation that has to be swindled.  Just as the Mughals did. As the British did.  As Congress did with Indira Gandhi onwards.  As Modi and Shah are doing now. 

I’m lucky I can afford to write this at least.  I know that soon all criticism will be silenced. There will be Rama Rajya where the chaste Sita will be confined to the flames.

Comments

  1. Jyotirmoy SarkarAugust 22, 2017 at 7:24 AM

    I have nothing much to speak about, only one thing, that is....you have talked about rhetoric but not about prosody...yah, there is prosody...the rhythmic way politicians continuing to promise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 22, 2017 at 7:40 AM

      I love the rhythm too. But the hollowness is terrible.

      Delete
    2. Jyotirmoy SarkarAugust 22, 2017 at 9:11 AM

      Good to know, yah its really terrible.

      Delete
  2. parwatisingariAugust 23, 2017 at 7:16 AM

    Tomichan, have you read this book destination unknown by Agatha Christie, Modi reminds me of the Evangelist leader in it, lots of rhetoric, lots of hot air, no action to be seen, all the noise his words creates silences the confusions that arise, be it demonetization or be it GST, be it underhand grabbing of power in goa, now, slithering into Tamilnadu.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more