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With the advancement of age which in modern reckoning should be 70+, there is every possibility of decline both in our physical and mental abilities. Even if one is fortunate to escape Alzheimer’s disease, there will be some degree of mental deterioration when one turns endlessly and monotonously repetitive. This is equally true of the nation which celebrates its 70^th Republic Day.   

For me this fear of being unconsciously repetitive when I am on my way to 80, had made me stop blogging on political and everyday issues for fear of  sounding preachy and pontifical. But when matters reach a tipping point with forces in play that will fundamentally alter the country’s ethos and its fundamental character and culture, the compulsion to express becomes an obligation overriding one’s fear of being a repetitive bore.

The downward slide that we are witnessing in the run up to 2019 elections signals a no-holds-barred election campaign. I have often referred to this decline in our political discourse where one stoops too low to win at any cost. The opposition is keen to bring to bay the Prime Minister on issues of corruption, unemployment, farmers’ suicide, 2014 promises not kept and institutional destruction. The coming together of 24  opposition parties in a united stand to establish a Modi Mukht Bharat rings quixotic like our PM’s oft repeated goal of bringing a  Congress Mukht Bharat as both go against the fundamental principles of democracy that guarantee fundamental rights to everyone and every party to be a part of the election process. Both the BJP and the seemingly united opposition are one in destroying the altar of democracy. One hopes that these elections do not betray the people of India forcing them to submit to rule by a single individual or by a combined opposition with a single aim to prevent the single individual from coming back to power.

2014 elections saw the volcanic eruption of Modi tsunami that left the then incumbent UPA II in tatters. Modi rode the wave set off by an earthquake of corruption the UPA government had turned a blind eye to. It was not a case of one rotten apple, but a whole barrel of apples spoiling the government of a clean, highly educated, honest and a self effacing Prime Minster whose good work during his first stint as PM between 2004 and 2009 was totally blotted out during his second innings by bureaucrats and a few politicians in power. Right to Education, Right to Information, Direct Benefit Transfer, Aadhar, Economic Growth, Food Security, the Indo-US nuclear deal etc –all  nullified by dishonest corrupt politicians who were a part of Man Mohan Singh’s government.

With Anna Hazare flagging the institution of Lokpal  before the 2014 elections as the only way to halt the runaway corruption, it was an opportune moment for the BJP to stir the corruption issue to a boiling point nd defeat the UPA led by the Congress. Modi strode like a Colossus projecting himself as the Knight on the white charger to root out black money. With his penchant for making promises that are impossible to deliver, he attracted all classes people with his promise to contribute 15 lakhs of rupees to every citizen out of the black money he would confiscate if voted to power. What rhymed well with the voters were his decisive intentions to make India great again-MIGA. His strong physical appearance, his fluent  articulation cleverly used to poorshow ManMohan Singh’s government , his tall promises of almost bringing the moon to the doorstep of every Indian,  his massive self boast, his mockery of the opposition , well complemented by the use of abusive, vitriolic  language on social media by his ‘bhakts’ against the opposition(in particular, the Congress) made  a powerful and impactful contrast to the prosaic and inaudible mewings of Mr. Singh and his team. Voters are today subjected to an overdose of poison that social media keeps feeding them. Congress and the opposition bleat like lambs the same list of wrong doings of the government in power; the ruling party returns the compliment lambasting the Congress for 70 years of achievementless ruin and dynastic imperiousness. Vote for who articulates loud and well the wrongdoings of the opponent..

Come 2019. There is no doubt all these  promises won the 2014 elections for Modi, but he soon realized a la Kipling that “ the promises are lovely and useful before the elections, but I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep”. He knew he had no magic wand to swirl and he had to contend with the same quality of people that the earlier PMs had dealt with.  Congress, lying low since 2014 after a near washout began to rally once more by playing  BJP’s game of creating perceptions with or without truth  to damage the credibility of the government in power. Rafael was a godsend to Congress almost like  ‘a gust of wind’ and ‘burst of fire’ in keeping with its meaning. No one will ever know the truth about Rafael or Augusta Westland just the way we know nothing about Bofors which brought down Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.  It does not matter what is truth and what is not. All that matters is perception –foul or fair! Today TV debates are hardly issue based but  yielding to political chicanery to create perceptions and thereby blindfold people from looking into truth.  We are slowly sliding down  to an age where independent thinking, rational analysis and logical assessments are being surreptitiously  replaced by conditioned thinking, irrational prejudices and illogical arguments. Democracy has become the last refuge of dishonest and crafty politicians. We, the people are manipulated to accept perceptions and not demand truth. You vote according to your perception and not according to reason and fact.

The third slide for the voters is an astonishing return to quota raj. No political party would dare do away with quotas which have proved to be the essential lifeline for political survival. The EWS(Economically Weaker Section) quota was approved by all parties without reasoned debate ( the exception limited to a negligible group of three state parties.)  If BJP was seen to be oozing sympathy for the EWS among the upper class, can Congress be far behind? EWS became the brand slogan for capturing votes.

But the EWS reservations were primed only for higher education. The educational institutions have been mandated to increase the number of seats by another 10% even as they are still grappling with problems in accommodating the extended 27% OBC reservations okayed by all political parties before 2014. The decline of standard in our colleges and universities is too palpable to be denied. We have experts in the academia who keep hammering about the decline in quality in our institutions,. But with one voice, our parliamentarians gave their wise nod to EWS quota. Can higher education reach even a semblance of quality if it is tethered to more and more quota?  It is apparent even to the dumbest person that EWS is not about reservation for government jobs which are non existent.  The current employment data shows the loss of six lakh jobs in 2017 and a massive 13.35 cut in monthly job creation. So EWS matters little as for as jobs are concerned.

The EWS quota is only meant for higher education where quality is already incarcerated within poor infrastructure, lack of funds, absence of good faculty and burgeoning  number of students with no academic inclinations, compulsorily pushed into colleges because what else can they do at 18+ when they have neither the skill nor the opportunity to be engaged productively! The truth is –which no one has the courage to admit- these students have no desire for higher learning and they are forced into colleges as there are not enough well equipped centres to impart skill training for purposes of employment. Modiji’s Skill India programme has not produced the desired result and the disastrous demonetization and GST policies have brought a closure to lakhs of jobs even if the youth had the requisite skill training. Quota for Merit is the name of the game played by all political parties.

The country is now being misled to believing that quota is the gateway to prosperity, which is belied by the plight of many millions of unemployed graduates. One recalls Marie Antoinette who said, if people don’t have bread, give them cakes. Here we are fooled to believe if the youth do not have jobs,  give them quotas.  No party has come out with the proposal to provide EWS quota  for all, cutting across caste and class if the young men and women  have the potential and inclination for academic study.  No one comes out with a proposal to  establish many hundreds of polytechnic institutions to train the youth for technical, medical, paramedical jobs  (that includes physiotherapists and care givers, opticians, orthopaedic assistants etc)  as well as to serve  the retail industry, auto industry, other  industrial units manufacturing mobile phones, computers, robots, lap tops etc.  No politician cares about real time and long term benefits to the youth, but only about benefits to himself/herself in the short term. The gullible voters are made to believe that quota system is a panacea for poverty.

Who reasons about the idea of post school education?  It is to provide an opportunity for every youth in the country to acquire skill in any area of his/her choice and enable him/her to contribute to society in the best possible manner. Academics is one opening, but it is not everything. Professional skill training is what a developing economy like ours needs today. We must keep in mind the example of five fingers which have individual use and which together contribute to the functioning of the hand. Everyone is not cut out for academics. This quota for EWS has to be spread across all post secondary institutions cutting across caste and class. Has any political party stood up and made this proposal? No, better to slide down quality, destroy merit and keep offering crumbs which will never make a slice to satisfy one’s requirements.

The last few years have seen a spurt in cow care without bothering how this misplaced care affects the farmers, as cows past their usefulness are free to roam through the fields and destroy the crops.  No one dares to rein them in lest he should be lynched. What about bulls and goats when they become senior citizens? Is this a case of gender discrimination where the cows alone are to be sheltered and protected? Is not the new found love for cows making demons of our people who are fed on irrationality and animosity towards religious communities that do not hail cows as goddesses (Gomata). The government is showing greater concern for superannuated cows and not about able bodied men and women in their prime of life. Vote for Cow seems to be the vote gathering slogan and creating Ministry of  Cow shows politicians’ contempt for the intellect of the people. Pulling wool in the name of cows with no simultaneous plans to protect them and develop the agricultural sector reveals the hide and seek game engaged by our political masters.  Farmer’s distress is a great boon  for the politicians so that they can promise loan waiver and garner votes. Congress has recently played the same game of promise like the BJP did in 2014  of waiving farmers’ loans without reckoning whether there is money in the State’s kitty? MP farmers have received 13 rupees  instead of the promised 24.000 loan waiver.  Promise, win and scoot is the name of the game. Did the Congress not reckon with the fact that the coffers would have been emptied and the promise will be only a vote gathering strategy? Did it make an analysis of last year’s state budget to find if money was available? Did it study the available data of how many crores are required for waiving off the loans before it promised the farmers? Is it just a one time loan waiver ?In which case, what are the follow up methods to pull the farmers out of farm distress if the weathergods play truant again?  Questions can be raised, but the promise has been done and over. Who cares till the next elections about farmers?

Who listens to the wise counsel of economic wizards like Raghuram Rajan who recently said “that the government's intervention in agriculture has been "sporadic and often distortionary.” He has recommended the central government to "rethink the whole process.. The government needs to move on technology dissemination. The government needs to think whether it can replace subsidies, distortion, government procurement with something more market-friendly,"

No politician today is unfurling a roadmap for development except offering freebies and sops. Politicians hold all gimmicks up their sleeves-  keep tanks in the universities  (to instill patriotism) in place of books and journals in the library, give quotas in place of quality of education, increase salaries of government employees  in place of demanding accountability for their work, promise people  a make believe world of achche dins(good days) in place of strategizing  to root out burre dins(bad days), give them sops in place of enabling them to earn, create ruckus in the name of religion in places like Sabarimala and Ayodhya  with no regard to gender discrimination and decree of the highest court of India?

Let people now make a wish list and submit it to the parties in fray. Let them vote for the party which will stand for a new India with a concrete proposal that is implementable and ensures equity, equality, justice and freedom. Can there be a party of thinkers who  have only the interest of the nation and have the wisdom to work out plans  to develop the country after factoring in its vastness, its swelling population, its diversity, its vulgar disparity between the rich and the poor and its difficulty to straddle between tradition and modernity? With less than three months to go for elections, let us at least hope our electorate are wise to ignore perceptions, recognize hollow promises, refuse sops and freebies and vote for men and women who do not promise to take them to the moon or space, but  take them  as partners in building a new India.

We cannot hope to have another Mahatma,  a suave and far sighted liberal like Nehru, an ironman like Sardar Patel, a wise sage like Rajaji, a cultured and sophisticated  like Maulana Azad, a fiery nationalist like Net aji, a cultural pluralist like Tagore, a spiritual leader like Aurobindo,  a social reformer like Ambedkar and many great illumined minds of the pre independence days, but in our midst we have any number of wise heads who understand, appreciate and try to absorb all these qualities that are needed to make India great again. Let us vote for those who will bring back decency and maturity to political discourse, who have honesty of purpose to steer India currently in a cusp between orthodox mind set and modern pragmatism, who have the vision that can be turned into an implementable strategy, who will give priority to education and healthcare so that the future of the nation is physically and mentally sound and strong and who genuinely believe in and work towards equality, equity, justice and freedom for all. It is time to discard all obsolete political ideologies of Right,Left and Centre  and embark on a new slate where you neither dismantle the West wall to repair the East wall or vice versa. Peter need not be robbed to pay Paul nor Paul hauled over the coals to serve Peter.

 Vote for… I leave it to the intelligent voter of India

Fragments Shored against future ruin

Note:

This was written two days ago when we were still in 2018

Two days to ring in 2019 and ring out 2018. Hopefully these days will pass off without any cataclysmic upheaval that December has always experienced- notably since the last quarter of the 20^th C- the continuous downpour in Chennai in December 2015 resembling  the flood fury recorded in the Bible (before Noah built his ark  at God’s command  to save all God’s created species  on earth) or the  2004 tsunami that struck Chennai in the last week of December, or the terrible Bhopal Gas tragedy in early December of 1984, or the last day of the Soviet Union on Dec 25, 1991 before it disbanded.

 I have an instinctive dread of December as it signals the inalterable fact that the world has aged by one year, which ipso facto signals all of us ageing. Who likes to grow old? That too when one is approaching the last quarter, assuming oneself to be wired to hit a century! Like the sales advertisements that fixes the price of commodities  at 99p or 199 rupees – always one short of the next hundred, we prefer to say that we are in the late twenties or late thirties etc even after we are well into the next decade of our life. I am 29, 39, 69 or 79… but not 30, 40, 70 or 80…  Hence my dread of ageing whenever we ring in the New Year. Every year at 12 midnight as the new year dawns, I make a firm resolution that I shall not be tense when the year end approaches, only to find myself repeating the same old resolution at the stroke of midnight making it as my new one for the next year. So much for all our New Year resolutions!

This year I have made a different resolution. I resolved not to allow age to dictate my life. We all know age is always on the Y axis; in fact it stays static in the X axis only at the end. But in practical terms, age is just a number though it takes a toll on our physical strength. But it has no power over our cognitive abilities unless we allow it to do so by indulging in mental lassitude and torpor. 

As years roll on, I find myself like Eliot’s protagonist of the Wasteland dipping into the fragments I had shored in the past against future ruins. Like him  I see myself  standing in the middle of a waste land that is littered with splintered pieces from a glorious, high-cultured past from where I have collected these fragments and which I wish to pile up and make the present wasteland a fertile one. Before I am bracketed with all other seniors of my age and accused as living in the past and regressing into childhood nostalgia, I make it clear that all things were not right with the past just as is the case with the present, but whatever was well then, was worth preserving to shore them against future decay  when it happens. Our present world resembles Eliot’s wasteland- emotionally arid, culturally lacking in civility, intellectually bankrupt and morally decadent where we have forgotten what it is to be civil, loving and compassionate, cultured in what we say and how we conduct ourselves, intellectually tolerant and accommodative and ethically truthful, honest and public spirited. What is happening today is not singularly an Indian phenomena, but it is spread worldwide making the 21^st Century slowly regress into an era of egocentrism, greed, violence and intolerance, bereft of intellectual aristocracy, far removed from the  altruistic principles  that endorsed  liberty, equality and fraternity two hundred and thirty years ago in 1789.

I will confine myself to India, where despite the strides we have taken to become a modern nation, we have regressed faster on civil liberties, freedom of speech, superstitious beliefs, and  last but not the least on human index. The 2014 elections started it all. (This is not an indictment of the ruling establishment of the last four and a half years, only a factual statement).The public domain which is increasingly that of the social media is now used vigorously to settle private scores and to let out personal deep seated animus.  It was first used in the run up to 2014 elections to show the scam filled ruling establishment of Congress and its alliance partners.                                                                                                                                                       The language used was coarse and uncivil. There was nothing to distinguish between form and content, as both were unrefined and churlish, offensive and rude. The elections were won as people wanted change from a government that was increasingly corrupt and saw in Modiji a saviour who projected himself as the Knight on a white charger to drive away the black hoarders and scamsters off the face of India. The election campaign was demagoguery at its best, making impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the people. Man Mohan Singh’s silence and his party’s disconnect with the people  and its inability to showcase any  of its  innovative actions (such as RTI, MNREGA, anti rape laws, idea of constituting a Lokpal, Direct Cash transfer, Aadhar, nuclear deal and increased use of nuclear energy, the idea of GST- though aborted by the opposition, terror containment through bold decisions to hang Afsal Guru and Kasab etc) were further helped  by  the multiple scams that tumbled out of various  government schemes and activities to consign Congress led UPA to ignominy and Modi’s voice rose like the Goonj uthi shennai and reverberated all over India. His caustic attack and berating of the erstwhile Prime ministers soon after sitting on the PM’s chair  and announcing his goal to make India a Congress Mukht Bharat without ever wondering whether democracy can survive without a strong opposition and his personal  hatred and venom for the Nehru-Gandhi family resonated with everyone of his huge followers .It was sometime before the mauled opposition learnt the lesson that to win, one should have the courage  to descend to the lowest common denominator of using abusive  language The Congress began to use the social media to lambast the ruling government and  reached ignominious heights when it vilified the elected PM as a chor. If anything that has drastically changed in the last four years, it is the demise of civility in political discourse. If this trend continues one dreads to visualize the retreat of civil language in our country.

I hark back to the past when political discourses were on policies, principles and ideologies and not on personalities. It was never the case that if you don’t like me, you are anti establishment, antinational and anti Hindu. The political arguments  in those days till the BJP’s tenure under Vajpayee were always on issues and never on the opponent’s genealogy or nationality or religion and caste. To speak of the ex Prime Minister’s wife as an Italian woman and his son as having Italian blood in his genes or questioning the patriotic credentials of the previous PM and attacking him as a Pakistani agent showed the level to which personal dislike can bring the discourse down. The fragments I have shored are from the freedom days when Bapuji and his true lieutenants never stooped low to vilify the British even when they fought for freedom from their rule. Let us now turn to a number of such voices in our midst that have shored these vignettes of grace and decency, elegance and etiquette though they remain silent and mute witnesses to incivility and tastelessness in the speeches of all those who appear on the TV channels, whose words of ‘wisdom’ are published  in the dailies as though an oracle has spoken.

Let us move to the issue of temple hopping. India is in the cusp of tradition and modernity but slowly receding towards superstition in the guise of preserving our tradition.  The spirited enthusiasm for Hindutva has made a large number of people conscious of Hindu religion. A large number of small icons in different corners in different cities are mushrooming as though the country was short of temples. Our netas are on yatra specials to make a case for building Ram Mandir. What an irony! Maryada Purush Ram, known for his just rule will be aghast at the idea of mob taking law into its hand and defying the order of the Supreme court  on sabarimala  and preparing an offensive to counter the possible judgement in the next few months on Ayodhya that may militate against the construction of Ram Mandir at the disputed site. What is mooted for Ram Mandir will be later replicated in Mathura and Kashi. When the ruling party and its allies have centre staged Mandir issue for electoral gains, can the Congress be far behind? Temple hopping seems a much easier hop, step and jump for Rahul and the Congress to grab power and not take  the secular route laid down in the Constitution of India.The Congress flip flop on Sabarimala is far more troubling than the BJP’s open defiance of the S upreme court verdict allowing women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple.  Hence election debates are neither on development nor on scripting a new roadmap to make India economically, ethically and intellectually strong but on non sequitur issues such as whether Rahul is a Brahmin, a Parsi or an Italian , whether he has a genuine Janehu( the sacred thread that Brahmins wear as  the rite of passage to the brahminfold) We have regressed into such crass arguments of caste and religion which are farthest from the idea of a modern India. The politicians are driving India backward by keeping the caste cauldron boiling. Caste discrimination and religious conflicts have long been the bane of Hindu society. They are incorrigible aberrations of Hinduism which is the only religion that does not advocate conversion, which inter alia speaks for accommodation and tolerance of all other faiths. It is important for teachers, scholars and academics to articulate the basic tenets of Hinduism to the younger generation through the works of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Rajaram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Keshabchunder Sen, Pt.Nehru, Dayanand Saraswati, Helena Blavatsky, Aurobindo Ghosh and many other modern writers.  These are the fragments that we have shored from our illustrious past against the misinterpretation and ruination of our great philosophy. It is high time we started an Indian Institute of Political Culture( as one of my friends deeply concerned about the low level political abuses of today suggested) to provide our leaders an understanding of the imperative not to mix religion and politics  and also learn the basic tenets of Hinduism towards promoting harmony and peaceful living among people of different faiths. Our writers listed above and many more I have not mentioned have given us rich wisdom that can protect us from hatred and violence that is currently spread in the name of Hindutva. To be proud of one’s religion is sacred; to preserve and sustain it but not at the cost of other religions is an equally sacred duty. Leaders should be trained in IIPC before standing for elections. Just as we need executives with a MBA degree to run a company , we need political leaders who have been trained in political management to administer the nation.

We cannot remain fossilized in caste politics. Reservations for the underprivileged have brought many thousands of them to participate in mainstream political, economic and social activities. But for the sake of votes, continuation of reservation has become a sacred cow that cannot be touched. The incalculable damage reservations have inflicted on these classes have offset all the gains of reservation. No politician has the courage to look into the ill effects of reservation. What has been attempted is making the underprivileged class lame and weak and always in need of crutches. Even the little birds are taught to fly by the mother birds. Centuries of hardship and discrimination cannot be wiped away simply by reservations.  It may sound utopian, but there is no harm in trying to create a utopia where everyone is enabled to acquire basic knowledge and one or two skills that would make them employable. Reservations have proved to be more of a curse than a genuine attempt to uplift the poor and the marginalized groups. In fact this group is so large that its claims are more than those of the well heeled groups. The IIPC should train our politicians to draw new schemes that are useful and accessible to all without the odium of hypocritical reservations. Again the fragments we have shored from our Varnasrama dharma,  a much misunderstood  social system which had the purpose to provide a structure that allowed people to work according to their natural tendencies and to organize society so that everyone, regardless of their position, made a contribution to the society. If we sweep the cobwebs that had accumulated over the Varnashrama dharma that was basically a system to bring an egalitarian society, we can attempt a  social structure that meets the aspirations and needs of a burgeoning population that are at a subsistent level.

Education is the most powerful weapon to change people from clinging to superstitious beliefs, far removed from rational and logical understanding of issues. I have often argued that tradition is like the strong tree that brings forth leaves, flowers and fruits. These contain the seeds for propagation. Seeds that are whole and healthy give rise to new shoots and those that rot go back into the soil and turn manure for the new crop. Tradition stands tall and strong, but the strong seeds are the fragments we shore while the weak ones automatically get re engineered and  make the soil fertile. Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican born political leader and writer said: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”. Education is the key to eliminating gender inequality, to reducing poverty, to creating a sustainable planet, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering peace.

Educators, academicians and scholars have this great responsibility to reform our education sector and synergise one’s potential for learning with his/her ability to acquiring skills. Technology is useful for acquiring skills but knowledge is essential to put to use the skills in a positive way. Technology has given us enormous powers, but it brings with it a new set of challenges. Computers are excellent source of information, but they are used as a short cut to learning rather than to acquire knowledge. They have bred greater degree of passivity in young minds instead of their active participation in the learning process. Unless we are aware of the challenges, we may end up using technology for destructive purposes.  The students at all levels should be introduced to seminal books that have shaped human thought and life so that they are equipped well to tackle the difficult questions arising out of modern world and modern  technology. These are the fragments that they will have to shore as they grow to counter the present state of dehumanization in action, speech, conduct and behaviour.  The fact that these fragments are available gives us hope to protect our fragile world from destructive and dehumanized forces.

Note:

This was written two days ago when we were still in 2018

Two days to ring in 2019 and ring out 2018. Hopefully these days will pass off without any cataclysmic upheaval that December has always experienced- notably since the last quarter of the 20^th C- the continuous downpour in Chennai in December 2015 resembling  the flood fury recorded in the Bible (before Noah built his ark  at God’s command  to save all God’s created species  on earth) or the  2004 tsunami that struck Chennai in the last week of December, or the terrible Bhopal Gas tragedy in early December of 1984, or the last day of the Soviet Union on Dec 25, 1991 before it disbanded.

 I have an instinctive dread of December as it signals the inalterable fact that the world has aged by one year, which ipso facto signals all of us ageing. Who likes to grow old? That too when one is approaching the last quarter, assuming oneself to be wired to hit a century! Like the sales advertisements that fixes the price of commodities  at 99p or 199 rupees – always one short of the next hundred, we prefer to say that we are in the late twenties or late thirties etc even after we are well into the next decade of our life. I am 29, 39, 69 or 79… but not 30, 40, 70 or 80…  Hence my dread of ageing whenever we ring in the New Year. Every year at 12 midnight as the new year dawns, I make a firm resolution that I shall not be tense when the year end approaches, only to find myself repeating the same old resolution at the stroke of midnight making it as my new one for the next year. So much for all our New Year resolutions!

This year I have made a different resolution. I resolved not to allow age to dictate my life. We all know age is always on the Y axis; in fact it stays static in the X axis only at the end. But in practical terms, age is just a number though it takes a toll on our physical strength. But it has no power over our cognitive abilities unless we allow it to do so by indulging in mental lassitude and torpor. 

As years roll on, I find myself like Eliot’s protagonist of the Wasteland dipping into the fragments I had shored in the past against future ruins. Like him  I see myself  standing in the middle of a waste land that is littered with splintered pieces from a glorious, high-cultured past from where I have collected these fragments and which I wish to pile up and make the present wasteland a fertile one. Before I am bracketed with all other seniors of my age and accused as living in the past and regressing into childhood nostalgia, I make it clear that all things were not right with the past just as is the case with the present, but whatever was well then, was worth preserving to shore them against future decay  when it happens. Our present world resembles Eliot’s wasteland- emotionally arid, culturally lacking in civility, intellectually bankrupt and morally decadent where we have forgotten what it is to be civil, loving and compassionate, cultured in what we say and how we conduct ourselves, intellectually tolerant and accommodative and ethically truthful, honest and public spirited. What is happening today is not singularly an Indian phenomena, but it is spread worldwide making the 21^st Century slowly regress into an era of egocentrism, greed, violence and intolerance, bereft of intellectual aristocracy, far removed from the  altruistic principles  that endorsed  liberty, equality and fraternity two hundred and thirty years ago in 1789.

I will confine myself to India, where despite the strides we have taken to become a modern nation, we have regressed faster on civil liberties, freedom of speech, superstitious beliefs, and  last but not the least on human index. The 2014 elections started it all. (This is not an indictment of the ruling establishment of the last four and a half years, only a factual statement).The public domain which is increasingly that of the social media is now used vigorously to settle private scores and to let out personal deep seated animus.  It was first used in the run up to 2014 elections to show the scam filled ruling establishment of Congress and its alliance partners.                                                                                                                                                       The language used was coarse and uncivil. There was nothing to distinguish between form and content, as both were unrefined and churlish, offensive and rude. The elections were won as people wanted change from a government that was increasingly corrupt and saw in Modiji a saviour who projected himself as the Knight on a white charger to drive away the black hoarders and scamsters off the face of India. The election campaign was demagoguery at its best, making impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the people. Man Mohan Singh’s silence and his party’s disconnect with the people  and its inability to showcase any  of its  innovative actions (such as RTI, MNREGA, anti rape laws, idea of constituting a Lokpal, Direct Cash transfer, Aadhar, nuclear deal and increased use of nuclear energy, the idea of GST- though aborted by the opposition, terror containment through bold decisions to hang Afsal Guru and Kasab etc) were further helped  by  the multiple scams that tumbled out of various  government schemes and activities to consign Congress led UPA to ignominy and Modi’s voice rose like the Goonj uthi shennai and reverberated all over India. His caustic attack and berating of the erstwhile Prime ministers soon after sitting on the PM’s chair  and announcing his goal to make India a Congress Mukht Bharat without ever wondering whether democracy can survive without a strong opposition and his personal  hatred and venom for the Nehru-Gandhi family resonated with everyone of his huge followers .It was sometime before the mauled opposition learnt the lesson that to win, one should have the courage  to descend to the lowest common denominator of using abusive  language The Congress began to use the social media to lambast the ruling government and  reached ignominious heights when it vilified the elected PM as a chor. If anything that has drastically changed in the last four years, it is the demise of civility in political discourse. If this trend continues one dreads to visualize the retreat of civil language in our country.

I hark back to the past when political discourses were on policies, principles and ideologies and not on personalities. It was never the case that if you don’t like me, you are anti establishment, antinational and anti Hindu. The political arguments  in those days till the BJP’s tenure under Vajpayee were always on issues and never on the opponent’s genealogy or nationality or religion and caste. To speak of the ex Prime Minister’s wife as an Italian woman and his son as having Italian blood in his genes or questioning the patriotic credentials of the previous PM and attacking him as a Pakistani agent showed the level to which personal dislike can bring the discourse down. The fragments I have shored are from the freedom days when Bapuji and his true lieutenants never stooped low to vilify the British even when they fought for freedom from their rule. Let us now turn to a number of such voices in our midst that have shored these vignettes of grace and decency, elegance and etiquette though they remain silent and mute witnesses to incivility and tastelessness in the speeches of all those who appear on the TV channels, whose words of ‘wisdom’ are published  in the dailies as though an oracle has spoken.

Let us move to the issue of temple hopping. India is in the cusp of tradition and modernity but slowly receding towards superstition in the guise of preserving our tradition.  The spirited enthusiasm for Hindutva has made a large number of people conscious of Hindu religion. A large number of small icons in different corners in different cities are mushrooming as though the country was short of temples. Our netas are on yatra specials to make a case for building Ram Mandir. What an irony! Maryada Purush Ram, known for his just rule will be aghast at the idea of mob taking law into its hand and defying the order of the Supreme court  on sabarimala  and preparing an offensive to counter the possible judgement in the next few months on AYodhya that may militate against the construction of Ram Mandir at the disputed site. What is mooted for Ram Mandir will be later replicated in Mathura and Kashi. When the ruling party and its allies have centre staged Mandir issue for electoral gains, can the Congress be far behind? Temple hopping seems a much easier hop, step and jump for Rahul and the Congress to grab power and not take  the secular route laid down in the Constitution of India.The Congress flip flop on Sabarimala is far more troubling than the BJP’s open defiance of the S upreme court verdict allowing women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple.  Hence election debates are neither on development nor on scripting a new roadmap to make India economically, ethically and intellectually strong but on non sequitur issues such as whether Rahul is a Brahmin, a Parsi or an Italian , whether he has a genuine Janehu( the sacred thread that Brahmins wear as  the rite of passage to the brahminfold) We have regressed into such crass arguments of caste and religion which are farthest from the idea of a modern India. The politicians are driving India backward by keeping the caste cauldron boiling. Caste discrimination and religious conflicts have long been the bane of Hindu society. They are incorrigible aberrations of Hinduism which is the only religion that does not advocate conversion, which inter alia speaks for accommodation and tolerance of all other faiths. It is important for teachers, scholars and academics to articulate the basic tenets of Hinduism to the younger generation through the works of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Rajaram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Keshabchunder Sen, Pt.Nehru, Dayanand Saraswati, Helena Blavatsky, Aurobindo Ghosh and many other modern writers.  These are the fragments that we have shored from our illustrious past against the misinterpretation and ruination of our great philosophy. It is high time we started an Indian Institute of Political Culture( as one of my friends deeply concerned about the low level political abuses of today suggested) to provide our leaders an understanding of the imperative not to mix religion and politics  and also learn the basic tenets of Hinduism towards promoting harmony and peaceful living among people of different faiths. Our writers listed above and many more I have not mentioned have given us rich wisdom that can protect us from hatred and violence that is currently spread in the name of Hindutva. To be proud of one’s religion is sacred; to preserve and sustain it but not at the cost of other religions is an equally sacred duty. Leaders should be trained in IIPC before standing for elections. Just as we need executives with a MBA degree to run a company , we need political leaders who have been trained in political management to administer the nation.

We cannot remain fossilized in caste politics. Reservations for the underprivileged have brought many thousands of them to participate in mainstream political, economic and social activities. But for the sake of votes, continuation of reservation has become a sacred cow that cannot be touched. The incalculable damage reservations have inflicted on these classes have offset all the gains of reservation. No politician has the courage to look into the ill effects of reservation. What has been attempted is making the underprivileged class lame and weak and always in need of crutches. Even the little birds are taught to fly by the mother birds. Centuries of hardship and discrimination cannot be wiped away simply by reservations.  It may sound utopian, but there is no harm in trying to create a utopia where everyone is enabled to acquire basic knowledge and one or two skills that would make them employable. Reservations have proved to be more of a curse than a genuine attempt to uplift the poor and the marginalized groups. In fact this group is so large that its claims are more than those of the well heeled groups. The IIPC should train our politicians to draw new schemes that are useful and accessible to all without the odium of hypocritical reservations. Again the fragments we have shored from our Varnasrama dharma,  a much misunderstood  social system which had the purpose to provide a structure that allowed people to work according to their natural tendencies and to organize society so that everyone, regardless of their position, made a contribution to the society. If we sweep the cobwebs that had accumulated over the Varnashrama dharma that was basically a system to bring an egalitarian society, we can attempt a  social structure that meets the aspirations and needs of a burgeoning population that are at a subsistent level.

Education is the most powerful weapon to change people from clinging to superstitious beliefs, far removed from rational and logical understanding of issues. I have often argued that tradition is like the strong tree that brings forth leaves, flowers and fruits. These contain the seeds for propagation. Seeds that are whole and healthy give rise to new shoots and those that rot go back into the soil and turn manure for the new crop. Tradition stands tall and strong, but the strong seeds are the fragments we shore while the weak ones automatically get re engineered and  make the soil fertile. Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican born political leader and writer said: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”. Education is the key to eliminating gender inequality, to reducing poverty, to creating a sustainable planet, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering peace.

Educators, academicians and scholars have this great responsibility to reform our education sector and synergise one’s potential for learning with his/her ability to acquiring skills. Technology is useful for acquiring skills but knowledge is essential to put to use the skills in a positive way. Technology has given us enormous powers, but it brings with it a new set of challenges. Computers are excellent source of information, but they are used as a short cut to learning rather than to acquire knowledge. They have bred greater degree of passivity in young minds instead of their active participation in the learning process. Unless we are aware of the challenges, we may end up using technology for destructive purposes.  The students at all levels should be introduced to seminal books that have shaped human thought and life so that they are equipped well to tackle the difficult questions arising out of modern world and modern  technology. These are the fragments that they will have to shore as they grow to counter the present state of dehumanization in action, speech, conduct and behaviour.  The fact that these fragments are available gives us hope to protect our fragile world from destructive and dehumanized forces.