The Wonder that is India

I wrote this post on the day India went into the first phase of elections, around a month back - I am publishing this on the day on which the election results are about to be declared

The world's largest democracy goes into elections from today onwards – a massive exercise of franchise of a billion plus people, spread across a month over the length and breadth of the 7^th largest nation in the world. And as the Dance of Democracy, as most media houses in India are calling it, unveils, a comedy of epic proportions is being played out on the national stage.

Consider a few of its choicest examples:-

1. Anybody who has been following the elections news and rhetoric knows that the BJP considers itself as the only party that can protect India from terror. It trumpets the achievements of Advani as a Home Minister as if he were Superhero Ironman, while condemning tinny-voiced Dr. Manmohan Singh as the worst pansy to have occupied the exalted chair of Indian PM. The Congress took umbrage to this and declared that the BJP's claims were fraudulent – were they not after all the people who threw in the towel in the face of the Kandahar hijacking drama and released dreaded terrorists? The backroom boys at BJP had no answer to this and they did two things – i] Advani claimed that he was not consulted before the Government decided to submit to the hijackers' demands (would he have done differently?) & ii] they decided to paint the Congress in the same brush by saying that Dr. Manmohan Singh, as Leader of the Opposition was consulted and presumably, he agreed with the Government's line of thought. Are they kidding themselves? Their own Home Minister claims to have known nothing, while the Leader of the Opposition was informed of the details? Nonsense!!
   
2. By the same yardstick, is the Congress trying to fool us by saying that they would not have done the same as the BJP Government? Our erudite PM calmly pointed out that the Congress when faced with a similar situation had decided to take on the terrorists head-on and that shows the Congress resolve. Quite laughable – How can the two be compared as similar situations? IC 814 was hijacked and taken to a country, whose Government was decidedly inimical towards India at that point of time, while the 26/11 terrorists were operating on Indian soil and had been surrounded by Indian troops from all sides. Plus, unlike an aeroplane, where all passengers were trapped as a bunch and could be finished off in a single attempt, the majority of the guests in the Taj and the Oberoi had managed to come out and the terrorists had only captured people in clusters. Does the Congress mean that it would have launched a Mossad style commando operation in the heart of Taliban country? Figure out what comes to your mind when you think of that possibility and you will know how absurd the Congress' claims are
   
3. Even more hilarious is the attempt by the ex-Janata Dal leaders like Laloo, Paswan etc to rake up that issue. Perhaps they have forgotten that unlike the Kandahar case where 189 innocent lives were at stake, the Janata Dal Government of V.P. Singh released 5 dreaded terrorists in exchange for Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the then Indian Home Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
   
4. The number of times the word 'communal' is used in conjunction with BJP, one has to pardon the kids of today if they think the two are synonyms. One would imagine that the word 'communal' denotes any kind of activities that demonstrate a pronounced bias in favour of a particular community or bias against a particular community. By that yardstick, what would you term the following:- i] the Congress led Government's decision in Andhra Pradesh to give a 5% reservation to Muslims in Government jobs and educational institutions in a flagrant violation of the Supreme Court's diktat on a cap on reservations; ii] the decision by the CPI-M in Kerala to align with Abdul Nasser Madhani, an indicted criminal, who was arrested for his role in the 1998 Coimbatore blasts, that killed 60 people – incidentally, it is the CPI-M which makes the loudest of noises on the BJP's alleged communalism; iii] virulent casteist stratagems employed by parties like the BSP and the RJD – remember the famous slogan of the BSP – Tilak, Taraju aur Talwa: Inko maaro joote chaar?
   
5. Politicians of all hues and philosophies have been caught on air distributing cash – almost all of them have come up with ingenious excuses on account of tradition, ceremonies etc. Methinks, these are the next possible explanations for all peculiarities which afflict all our political parties:-
   

Crime	Justification
Booth rigging, Electoral Malpractices	Martial traditions of the larger Indian race – the BJP will go ahead and claim it to be true Bharatayita
Dynastic nepotism overshadowing democratic election of leaders in political parties	Close knit family culture in India – after all, even God Shiva entrusted the military command of the Divine Army to his own son, Karthikeya
No attempts at providing bijli/sadak to the long suffering people of their constituencies	Heightened levels of environmental consciousness – ensuring that electricity reaches to all corners of the country would mean commissioning even more thermal power plants, which means more burning of coal, leading to hideous consequences for the ecology; more roads will mean more of those obnoxious low-cost Nano cars will clog the roads – Shiva, Shiva
No attempts at ensuring the security of the Indian population	It contravenes Charles Darwin's axiom of Survival of the Fittest – those, that fall victims are simply obeying the laws of Nature
Humiliatingly agreeing that no Indian born leader is good enough to lead the oldest Indian party that led us to independence	Atithi Devoh Bhava – And if the foreigner is the God (Deva), then how can mere mortals hope to lead instead of the God?