The Reincarnation of Gandhi

I was born in independent India. My history books in school talked a lot about our freedom struggle and the contributions and sacrifices that many of our brethren and leaders made to attain freedom. Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation, really lead from the front and gave the freedom movement the needed direction and momentum. We went on the path shown by them and made the constitution which gave full rights and freedom to everyone. We are today the world’s largest democracy by virtue of our size not because we are the best. We take pride in being the largest democracy for which we actually did precious little. Our uncontrolled natural progression has given us this gift of being the largest. And yet we take it as an achievement.

As far as democracy goes, we are democratic in the true sense of the word. Just as we have the right to speech, right to education, right to justice, right to protest, we also have right to destroy public property, right to block roads in processions, right to be corrupt, right to not do your job as  a public servant to name a few. With the rights that a good democracy gives, also come some responsibilities. This was perhaps never imprinted in our minds by our education system which by the way is one of the most stringent in the world. If I have the right to protest against a policy of the government as a citizen, it is also my responsibility not to damage public property. If it is your right that government departments give you good service, it is also your responsibility to follow the rules, not find short cuts by bribing officials. Needless to say the systems themselves need to be overhauled so that people do not have to find other via media to get their work done.

It seems the time has come for this overhauling. Going by the fast paced actions in very many areas in the last 100 odd days, the new government seems to understand what people are going through. I always felt we needed another modern day Gandhi to take us forward. I feel Mr. Modi fits into this mould very well. He comes from the same state as Gandhi, he is a Gujarati as Gandhi, has not been born with a silver spoon like Gandhi, has done work at grass roots level like Gandhi, is practical, people oriented, is rooted in Indian culture and vouches by its traditional knowledge as Gandhi, believes that solution to every problem faced by people lies with the people themselves, that any movement to be successful has to be peoples’ movement.  Under Mr. Modi’s leadership, India is in for a second innings, a second awakening, a second freedom- this time from poor governance, archaic laws and undemocratic ways of running a democracy.

I feel sad that even after so many years of independence we have so much poverty in our country, so much corruption, the poor being throttled by people in position- whether it is purchasing their land at price of peanuts, whether it is displacing them for better use of their land, not doing enough to do away with bonded labour and so on. I live in Delhi, the capital city, which has been the seat of governance since independence. I see so much poverty all around- slums and shanties, beggars, people living under flyovers, rag pickers, people living inside dustbins and public toilets, people living around drains and railway lines. The list is endless. If this is the condition of the capital city we can imagine the condition in the small towns and villages. In 67 years, we could not make enough room to train our people, to give them skills, or any kind of unskilled employment so that they too can lead a dignified life. To this we say our numbers are large and government has limited funds. But then we take pride in calling ourselves the largest democracy- should this not make us think. We take pride in being the largest but have done little to include the poorest in the development story. For them life revolves around getting two square meals a day, whereas the other end of the continuum is buying IPL teams, multi-million dollar companies in foreign countries, living in plush houses running into several thousand square feet in the best residential spaces, to name a few. Agreed democracy does not mean equality, but does it mean not providing to our brethren who have never come out of abject poverty.

The government has to be answerable to what it was doing for so long. I think people never got any answer to this question and hence Mr. Modi has been put in the seat of power, as people view him as their best chance to deliver the goods. They see him as the second coming of Gandhi-not Rahul but Mahatma.