Matters of choice

Choice : Choice consists of a mental decision, of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one or more of them. - Thats what wikipedia says.

Choice invokes interesting emotions in all of us, some us of feel a sense of control with our surroundings, some us of feel burdened by it, out of fear of making bad decisions . But most of us do feel empowered by it, a sense of joy almost, that we, individually, can have an effect on the outcome of major events. And sometimes, on the outcome of huge national events.
Yes, national events like the imminent Lok Sabha elections of 2014 where the Indian voter has been given a choice between potential leaders, or so he believes.

These elections are being portrayed as a three way fight, between the BJP (The favorites), the Congress (The condemned) and the AAP ( The underdogs). Also, we must not forget the small, local players who may not be the kings, but the kingmakers indeed. Who, through pre-poll party hopping and post-poll alliances might end up deciding the future of the country.
The media(along with these three parties) is trying to make this into a fight of personalities, instead of it being a fight of political ideologies. So these days we read a lot about individual constituencies in the media. Like Varanasi(Kejriwal VS Modi), Amethi(Kumar Vishwas VS Smriti Irani VS Rahul Gandhi), Chandigarh (Pawan Bansal VS Kirron Kher VS Gul Panag) Chandni Chowk (Kapil Sibal VS Ashutosh).

But, is it really a battle of these personalities, even in these handful seats, can just these personalities make a change if elected? Will their party ideologies(read high commands) let them do what they feel is necessary to be done. Not just for the constituency, but even in the parliament in general. We have to realise, these are elections for the LOK SABHA, the elected will become the members of parliament, who will make or break important laws and ordinances in the next 5 years. The laws and ordinances that will decide the socio-politico-economic state of our country. Thes MPs will be sitting in the parliament, and in the parliament, its always the ruling party VS the opposition party, the ayes VS the Nos, its never Individual A VS Individual B. The final decision on any matter almost always lies with the party high commands(Gandhi family for the Congress, RSS for the BJP and Arvind Kejriwal for the AAP).

So really, how important are personalities in these elections???  Unfortunately, with the ongoing media revolution in the country, all the parties almost feel compelled to market personalities against ideology. I mean, BJPs Hindutva ideaology(its not that All Hindus are better than all Muslims, its much greater/deeper than that) is perhaps the remedy to all of India's problem right now, the discipline and attitude that it brings, can really help the country grow in today's time. Or the Congress' Secular roots, are so very important in a nation as diverse as ours. Or the AAP's anti-corruption, anti-establishment,anarachistic, bordeline communist ideology(that is filling the gap that India's communists have left out) is so important to keep the governant functioning, and the bureaucracy in control. These are the ideologies they must be trying to sell to the voter, not the personalities in their parties.
The irony is,  none of the parties want to use their ideology in the election campaign right now but when they come into power, thats how they will be making their decisions, they are not going to be individual decisions, Modi is not coming with a magic wand to solve all of India's problems, they are going to be consensual decisions taken by many people, after a lot of deliberation, based on their ideology.  Thats the way democaracy works, and if we really want individuals to matter more than ideology then we may be on our path to a dictatorship, if not now, then in the future. This is another choice we will be making these elections.

As someone rightly said, we are the outcome of our own choices. On election day, when you walk into that booth, in front of the EVM and you are about to make your choice, do realise, you are not just making a choice between candidates, but you are also making a choice between ideologies.
 

Dharna VS Dharma

What does a CM do? What are his roles and responsibilities? What is his Dharma? keeping the legal, constitutional definition aside, my intention is to think about what are the answers to these questions in the context of contemporary times, with respect to the people of Delhi, and with respect to Arvind Kejriwal - The Anarchist CM.

Anarchy is the word being used to describe the Aam Aadmi party's Dharna and their ways of getting their points across , right from the opposition to the media, everyone is using this word, and the AAP is not getting any respite from any corner.  We have to understand one thing here, AAP's idea, inception, and rise to power has been full of Anarchist flavours, so their governance being Anarchic should hardly be of any surprise.

The people of Delhi voted them into power knowing very well, being impressed by even, their anarchic and disruptive nature. You can't buy a ticket for a Rohit Shetty entertainer and expect an Anurag Kashyap epic when you enter the theatre. I know its not as simple as that, a CM is supposed to have some responsibility towards governance, but he is also entitled to his own police force, otherwise how can he assure safety to his people, and the fact that he takes to such unprecedented,extreme (anarchic some might say) measures to ensure his Dharma should be taken in a positive light instead of  aspersions being cast against him. At least he is ready to ask the tough questions and fight for them in these times, instead of using them as an excuse for his government's inefficiency.

A Dharna is his way to express the frustration and helplessness that any one of us will feel if we were in his place. He cannot turn away from his Dharma and shirk the responsibility away by completely blaming the central government. In the previous Delhi governments, this precise problem was a perfect excuse to respond to most law and order problems, and everyone said how convenient it is for Sheilaji not to own up to anything and not even do anything about it except to write a letter to the Home minister once in a while!.

There is also the argument of all the disturbance and inconvenience being caused to the real "Aam Aadmi" by these protests. How four metro stations are blocked and how the republic day preparations are being affected. Like somebody very rightly said, if you want to build flyovers you have to bear with the inconveniences that come with its construction. The "Aam Aadmi" needs to ask this question to himself, is he ready to feel some inconvenience right now to cherish the fruits of the flyover in the future.

I just feel, something had to be done, there a very many such issues facing Delhi right now, and all of them need to be taken up, need to be addressed, just like some of these issues would require deep thought, wisdom, fresh new ideas in terms of governance, others would require extreme, aggressive steps that many may call anarchist. It is for us, for each one of us to contemplate, how can we get things done in this country, have letters to ministers ever achieved anything here? we shout out loud only when people don't listen to us, and how the centre responds to the CM's Dharna will tell us if he is shouting at deaf ears or not.

Let's just hope that someday the Delhi phoenix rises from these anarchist ashes.

The Moral Compass

How do people calibrate their moral compass? Does it always point true north ? Or does it sway from the nort-east to the north-west depeneding on where their comfort zones lie, down south even, sometimes if the need be.

Here's a hypothetical scenario: although there are many of us who stop at traffic signals diligently in our regular day to day lives, but in times of urgency when we are going to miss an important meeting or a flight, would we really stop? or would we just make sure no cop is watching and jump the signal, because this is after all a matter of urgency and moving fast is very important, more important even, than sticking to our own principles, or traffic rules in this matter.

The matter of practicality comes in at such times, I fear. We tend to get practical and focus on accomplishing the task at hand rather than where our moral compass is pointing to, the compass is sometimes too inconvenient to follow and it is not deemed prudent to be so rigid in our stance, let common sense prevail they say, and so do we.

At the risk of sounding like an idealist I ask this question, should we not follow our principles come what may, because they are, after all, the rules by which we have decided to play this little game called life. And breaking these rules feels like cheating, that too in a game which we play with ourselves and rules we have set-up before hand. Am I sounding too harsh? shouldn't we be allowed to break these rules, who's watching  us after all, and who's getting hurt by this, and these are self-imposed rules, surely we must be allowed to make amendments, shouldn't we be? Its like the British saying they will play cricket with 12 players in their side because they invented the game!!!

I ponder these things more these days because a strange incident that happened last month. Me and my wife had a 9 pm train to catch one Friday evening, we packed our luggage, locked the house and took the elevator to get down. It was around 815, the cab was waiting for us outside the society and given the traffic conditions we would have to hurry to get to the station on time. As we moved out of the elevator and were walking towards the society gates, we saw a large crowd forming close by in the society compound, out of curiosity we just walked a couple of steps towards the crowd to check what was the matter, and there to our horror, was lying a girl, not older than 20, blood flowing from under her head, she had taken a fall from the terrace of our 12 story building and as per the people present, had died on the spot. Who was she, did she fall accidentally, or was pushed by somebody or did she do this to herself??? All these thoughts were racing in our heads now as people asked us to try and identify her, I could see the panic on my wife's face when she was asked to take a closer look, not having seen a dead body from that close ever before in her life. She was on the verge of breaking into tears, of breaking down,  and guess what was going on in my head, I regret it, but I was thinking about the train and how I would miss it if I did not leave the place that very moment, in my head I was telling myself to control myself and my spouse and get both of  us moving, because it was very important that we don’t miss the train. I thought about the girl, and how unfortunate it was, and how it would look inhuman if we just walked pass right now, but I told myself that we had too, and that’s what we did, within 5 minutes we were in the cab racing towards the station.

I know I sound like a heartless person, and people will abhor me for such callous actions, and no, there is not 'but' in this sentence, I cannot and will not defend my actions, I present them as they are. I did an inhuman deed in the name of being practical and letting reason take control over emotion, the good thing though, was that my wife talked sense into me about half way to the station and we turned the cab around to come back. Her point being, somebody had died that day, in our society, in front of us, how can we just walk past something like that so callously, I tried to argue with her with all the practicality and logic I could muster, but even I knew somewhere deep down inside( at least I like to believe so) that what I had done was wrong and we should return. And so did we.

I would not like to delve much into the specifics of the matter, we did spend the night in utter shock. Discussing what had happened, and also, how we had reacted to it. And that is where the question of a moral compass rose in my mind, why do we tend to lose it in the times we need it the most. In trying times, these principles should give us strength, but we drop them at the first sign of trouble. And if that's indeed true then what is the point of having any principles at all, why put up this charade? Maybe some of us aren't and some of us are?

I do not try to answer these questions, they are beyond me, and neither should any one else, but it is very important to ponder over such questions, to think about them, because that's what makes us human, and it is also important to understand  that if we lose our moral compass for good, we might end up being savages lost in the jungle of life.