Skip to main content

India needs a good leader



The leader makes a world of a difference in any organisation or nation. It is the leader who gives direction to the organisation or nation by formulating policies and strategies. The people go where the leader takes them, leaving aside a few who will always have their own vision and opinions stemming from that vision.

Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 with a resounding victory. The majority his party enjoyed in the Lok Sabha could have been used to transform India into one of the best nations in the world: best in every way – economically, politically and morally. Instead the 5-year Modi reign has left India a caricature of what was promised in the powerful rhetoric of Modi which won him the popular votes.

Let us take just a few examples.

Modi promised to create 2 crore new jobs per year. The fact is that more jobs were lost in the country during Modi’s rule. In the first four years of Modi’s reign, a meagre 18 lakh jobs were created and most of these jobs belong to what the International Labour Organisation (ILO) classifies as vulnerable employment. The unemployment rose further to 6.10 per cent in Modi’s last year in power (so far). Contrast that figure with the 3.41 per cent in 2014 when Modi assumed office. Today India has more unemployed people than any country in the world. The Prime Minister’s solution was the mockery of asking the youth of India to sell pakodas in the streets.

One of the most popular promises of Modi was to contain inflation and bring down prices. But prices of most things skyrocketed during his reign. No Indian will ever forget how she paid record prices for her vehicle’s fuel when the international crude oil rates were the lowest.

Demonetisation may have become history by making its entry into school textbooks which are created by the Prime Minister’s own writers. But the thousands of people who lost their livelihood because of that dastardly act won’t accept textbook theories.

Modi’s promise of ache din bore fruit only for a few corporate giants who looted the country in various forms, bank frauds being the most popular. On 2 May 2018, The Times of India reported that during the four years of Modi’s rule there were 23,000 bank frauds amounting to Rs 1 lakh crore. Add to that the other scams like the Vyapam scandal in Madhya Pradesh, the PDS scam in Chattisgarh, GSPC scam in Gujarat and mining scam in Rajasthan. Which Indian will ever forget the Rafale scam?

A staggering 36,420 farmers committed suicide in the first two years of Modi’s rule. After that the Indian government refused to publish the statistics of farmer suicides. Suppression of harsh truths is the typical Modi way of solving problems. Propaganda is another.

In the first 4 years of Modi, a whopping sum of Rs 4,343 crore was spent on propaganda, just for advertisements and publicity. Forget the thousands of crores spent on the Sardar Patel statue (Rs 3,000 crore), Shivaji statue (Rs 2,500 crore) and the Lord Rama statue which is expected to swallow Rs 330 crore.

I can go on and on. I’m choosing to ignore the vitiated communal atmosphere in the country, the foreign policies that have put off all the neighbouring countries, and the umpteen slogans that Modi gave us which now echo agonisingly in the country’s toxic air.

One leader, just one leader, made all these differences. One leader, just one leader, can make an entire new difference. But such a leader is yet to emerge on the national scene. That is India’s current tragedy.




Comments

  1. Dear Tomichan,

    It's a very well said articl9.people should retrospect.

    SYLENDRA

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wonderfully stated the facts Tomichan. Our beloved Bhakts must read this post. I am sure they have another way of presenting these facts, which in turn be beneficial for Modiji. People must realise the fact that India is going down in aspects of development and use their one and only powerful weapon (vote) wisely this time to choose a right person.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bhakti blinds. Nothing, not even god, can open the eyes of bhakts.

      Delete
  3. I appreciate the last line the most. Indeed, such a leader is yet to appear on the horizon which the current tragedy of India. And that's the reality the present Indian premier is cherishing the most.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yet people emerge from nowhere! I'm sure India will get the leader it deserves sooner than later.

      Delete
  4. I think...to have a good leader the first and foremost change that should be made is...who qualify for a minister/political leader, to teach even in primary schools being graduate is mandatory but to run a country...
    If we take a look at ancient time India was much progressed than any other country but gradually with time we know what actually has taken place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most of our kings were people who promoted arts and knowledge. Today thugs become rulers. Education does matter.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...