We all dream of a better world where there is peace, happiness and harmony, don’t we? No one would like degradation of environment, loss of human lives due to wars, corrosion of human spirit by crime and corruption, dehumanisation through poverty, economic and political conditions, all of which drain human energy and make life miserable.
On the contrary, all would like life to be characterised by harmony and health, well-being and wealth. But the question is, what are those values? How can such a socio-politico-economic system be established which has those values? What will enhance human experience and enable men and women to have a lifestyle that can make the society viable?
If we conduct a survey among various groups of people on this particular subject, we will find that their opinion would most probably crystalise around 10 or 15 major points. They would say that a better world is one in which the following exist only in milder forms or in a lesser degree than we have them in the present-day world. The major problems or causes of sufferings are wars, violence and cruelty in any form, poverty, unemployment and social, economic and political injustice, environmental pollution and ecological imbalance, corruption, crime, indiscipline and obscenity, disease, infirmity and high mortality rate, slavery, lack of freedom or deprivation of human rights, hunger, malnutrition or starvation, wrong attitude towards the other sex and abuse of children, addictions, intoxications, tensions and lack of happiness, hatred, suspicion, fear, cut-throat competition, rivalry and absence or lack of love and co-operation at various levels of society.
Post this survey, if we conduct another one asking every segment of society about the efforts or improvements that they expect from the other segments to create a better world, a fair enough consensus on the following lines would emerge. People would say that they want scientists to have an orientation of spirituality, religious leaders to have scientific temper, doctors to treat not only the body but also the mind, education to have spiritual and moral development, women to be given proper social status and men’s attitude and outlook towards them to be more spiritualised. The youth and children should be given more love and they should respect their elders. The society should have a balance of love and law and it should be based on the principles of justice, fairplay and equality of opportunity.
Now these objectives can be fulfilled only if every segment of society works a bit for the fulfillment of what other segments expect of it. Each individual has to contribute a bit of his time to work towards raising awareness of the people so as to realise the above goals. For this global task is required the global co-operation. Hence, a new kind of bank to which each individual or institution can offer its contributions so as to build a better world is the need of the hour.
Writer: Rajyogi Brahmakumar Nikunj ji
Source: The Pioneer
Agnes Kharshiing and Amita Sangma, two well-known environmentalists from Meghalaya, were brutally attacked last year by a group of 30-40 people, suspected to be members of the coal mining mafia in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district. Reports of illegal rat-hole coal mining being carried out in defiance of a ban imposed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had taken them to the area for an on-the-spot verification.
Even as the two activists were recovering from injuries, an accident that trapped 15 coal miners in the rat-hole mine was reported from that very area. While there has been very little progress in the rescue operations, the factum of illegal mining being carried out in sub-human conditions stood fully exposed.
While imposing the ban some four years ago, the NGT had taken into consideration unsafe mining practices along with other environmental concerns. For instance, earlier reports had pointed out that mining activities directly impact water quality of the region and its colour changes completely. Later, as a relaxation to the complete ban, the already extracted coal lying at the pit heads was allowed to be transported. However, over a period of time, this virtually became an excuse for a continuing and never-ending stream of illegal activities. It is, therefore, important that the matter is taken up afresh to put an end to the farce of transportation of the extracted coal. Besides stringent regulations must be framed and implemented for maintenance of safety and preservation of environment.
Admittedly, coal mining is a very important contributor to the economy of the small State. And for some political parties, the lifting of the NGT ban on mining became a top agenda. But this is in complete contrast with the prevailing situation in the neighbouring district of Nongstoin, where the Kyelleng-Pyndengsohiong, Mawtahbah uranium project (KPM uranium project) by the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL) has been lying in a limbo for over a decade.
Despite receiving all the necessary clearances, including those from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, after a public hearing at Nongbah Jynrin, the project has failed to take off. This due to stiff opposition from a section of local tribals as well as the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU).
The UCIL, on its part, seems to have undertaken extensive awareness campaigns to counter the motivated disinformation. Diverse groups of people — consisting of NGOs, legislators, Khasi Students’ Union and media persons — have been taken to the project site by UCIL to observe its operations at Jaduguda in Jharkhand in order to convince them of the safety. Similarly, in the past, several teams of medical experts, even from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, have visited Nongstoin, Pambriew and adjoining areas. They found nothing abnormal about the general health of the people in the vicinity of the mines, particularly new-borns.
Thus, on the one hand, we have a set of mining activities, which continue in defiance of court orders, and on the other, we have the much-needed uranium, whose mining remains obstructed. A recent parliamentary panel report recommended that necessary steps be undertaken for the opening up of new mines to reduce India’s dependence on imported uranium. Currently, India imports this precious raw material from Canada, Russia and Kazakhastan.
According to estimates, there are reserves of over 20,000 tonnes of high-grade uranium ore in Domiasiat, Wahkyn and Wahkut besides other areas of Nongstoin. Most of our requirement, to create reserves of uranium for production of atomic energy, could, thus, be met from the resources available in Meghalaya.
In this context, some Constitutional issues also need focussed attention. According to the Union List (Schedule VII) entry 6, atomic energy and mineral resources necessary for its production are in the domain of the Union Government. The entries 54 and 55 pertain to mining regulations in general besides their safety aspects.
At the same time, Autonomous District Councils have also been empowered through Schedule VI of the Constitution on certain related matters. As per Section 12A (b) of Schedule VI, the President may, with respect to any Act of Parliament, by notification, direct that it shall not apply to an autonomous district or an autonomous region in the State of Meghalaya, or with such exceptions or modifications… et al. This provision of Schedule VI needs to be interpreted in unambiguous terms so that narrow local interests are not able to hold to ransom issues of vital national importance.
(The writer is a retired Delhi Police Commissioner and former Governor of Meghalaya)
Writer: KK Paul
Courtesy: The Pioneer
This writer is yet to come across a masjid, which is a place of prostration to Allah, the merciful, which is named after any individual. On the other hand, a dargah, which is a tomb of a saint, is named after the holy man. So is a mazhar or a shrine of an important person named after him. There are many maqbaras or places of graves that are generally constructed for rich and ordinary persons merely to perpetuate their memory. Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, commonly known as alamgeer or conqueror of the world, was humble enough before Allah to name his wife’s grave as Bibi Ka Maqbara. He did not have the gumption to even call it a mazhar or a dargah, for that matter.
Similarly, it is difficult to think of a masjid without a minaret or several of them. As it is well-known, the function of a minaret is to enable a muezzin to stand as high as possible before he issues the azaan or the call for worship. The higher he can stand, the greater the distance his voice or baang would carry and more would be the worshippers, who would attend the prayer. In the days where there were no loudspeakers, the height of the minaret was most crucial. An outstanding example of height is the masjid built by Aurangzeb on the banks of Ganga at Varanasi, which has two extremely tall minarets.
Taking a foreign example, the big mosque at Istanbul was earlier a church of Hagia Sophia. There, the church was converted into a masjid by raising four minarets as tall as the pinnacle of the dome. In rural Anatolia and its wheat lands, most masjids have a single minaret. But a minaret was there nevertheless. Or else, the baang would not carry.
When this writer visited Ayodhya, he had heard a great deal about the Babri Masjid, as if it was some historic piece of architecture. This was early in 1991. The writer was surprised at the uncomely sight of this enormous rough-looking trinity of domes. More surprising was the total absence of anything like a minaret. This made him suspicious enough to enquire one by one, from three passing Muslim gentlemen, as to whether there was a mehrab or a mimbar inside, or a wuzooh for a wash before the prayer. A few minutes earlier, the writer was categorically informed by a skull cap-wearing gentleman that he could not go inside, hence the queries.
Whoever the writer talked to, including two shopkeepers, referred to it as the ‘Babri’ Masjid. The writer had not earlier, or even later, come across a mosque named after any individual. His suspicion continued about the nature of the edifice in the absence of a minaret and the presence of the name Babri. On subsequent contemplation, the writer felt that perhaps, the edifice was a maqbara of Mir Baqi, one of the military commanders of Babar in the latter’s invasion of India. The date of the building has been consistently given as 1528 AD.
Babar won the First Battle of Panipat in April 1526. He and his immediate men were new to India and were generally busy establishing their rule at Agra. How could Mir Baqi get the opportunity to visit Ayodhya; have the Ram temple demolished and have the huge Babri structure constructed — all in a matter of two years? In those days, five centuries ago, everything had to be done manually — breaking, building and all. It must have taken longer than two years. Babar died in 1530 while beseeching Allah, the merciful, to save the life of his ailing son Humayun.
Taking all these circumstances, — the lack of minaret and the presence of the name Babri among others — could it be possible that Mir Baqi did not forget the King he was beholden to, and admiring of? He took his time to build this maqbarah, probably larger than any in India, as a compact building in the loving memory of Zaheeruddin Mohammad Babar. In short, was the edifice Babri maqbarah rather than a masjid? If so, why is the Sunni Personal Law Board making so much song and dance about the edifice and the land on which it stood? Up to a dozen of maqbarahs were demolished under the British rule in order to lay out Delhi’s Golf Course.
Incidentally, Sir Arnold Toynbee had visited Delhi and Bombay in the 1950s to deliver the Azad Memorial Lectures. This was at the personal invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru. During the course of his lectures, Arnold expressed surprise at having seen the masjid with tall minarets, as we mentioned above, on the banks of the Ganga, still standing. This despite India’s independence, at the holiest of holy places of the Hindus. He went on to say that on his recent visit to Warsaw in Poland, he saw the cathedral in that city as a Roman Catholic edifice. When the Russians had conquered Warsaw a century or more ago, they had converted the earlier Catholic cathedral into a Russian orthodox church. The poles could not tolerate this but were helpless. When they regained independence towards the end of World War I, they demolished the Russian church and rebuilt their own.
This pattern of behaviour was in evidence elsewhere too. Several wars were fought during the 1990s after the collapse of the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia, particularly the 1991-1995 war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was the biggest conflict in Europe since the World War II, causing massive terror and brutality with approximately 150,000 deaths and several million people forcibly resettled. Although the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who fought this war, were Europeans of Slavonic ancestry, they had significant and irreconcilable differences in religion. The Serbs are eastern-orthodox Christians, the Croats were Roman Catholics, and the Bosnian Muslims are Slavs Islamised after the Turkish conquest. The Serbs have always defended Christian Europe from invaders, most notably the Ottoman Turks. The heroic Serbian defence in the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottoman invaders in 1389 AD stands out as a landmark.
Conquering militias or armies in this 1992 inter-Yugoslav conflict destroyed the enemy’s religious symbols and built their own to symbolically mark the territory. For example, the capital city of what is today called the ‘Serb Republic’ of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was ethnically cleansed of all its numerous historic and newer mosques, with the Serbs also expelling the local Muslims, ostensibly in retribution for centuries of Ottoman humiliation.
Not only that, the Orthodox Serbs destroyed about 200 Catholic churches in Krajina in Croatia during their four year occupation of the town. This was Serb revenge on atrocities against the orthodox Church by the Croat Nazi puppet state during World War II. The Catholic Croats had then murdered over a 100 orthodox priests and three bishops, massacred about 1,000 Serbs in a town Glina and also razed its orthodox Church of the nativity.
Similar is the tale of Córdoba in Spain. It was originally a cathedral (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption) but was conquered by the invading Moors and turned into a mosque in 784 AD by Abd al-Rahman. It was reconquered by 1236 AD by King Ferdinand III of Castile during the Reconquista. The centre of the mosque was converted into a Catholic cathedral. The kings who followed added further Christian features.
(The writer is a well-known columnist and an author.)
Writer: Prafull Goradia
Courtesy: The Pioneer
The president of the World Congress of Poets (WCP) and the founder of the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Prof Achyuta Samanta, informed that the World Academy of Arts and Culture (WAAC) and the two institutes—KIIT and KISS, will jointly organise the next WCP in Odisha. This announcement was made in the presence of the executive board member of the WCP and WAAC, Jacob Isaac and the senior advisors at KIIT and KISS, Dr RK Das and Dr BN Nanda, at a press meet in New Delhi.
Dr Samanta informed that the event is expected to be attended by more than 500 poets from around 100 countries. He further added that besides the poets, 2,000 writers and poets from India and another 2,000 delegates from Odisha are expected to join the congress.
“On the request of KIIT and KISS, the decision to organise this prestigious event at KIIT and KISS was taken by the executive board members of WAAC, the president of WAAC, Dr Maurus Young, senior vice president, Prof Ernesto Kahan and the general secretary Dr Maria Eugenia Soberanis, during the 38th WCP, which was hosted in Suiyang County of China’s Guizhou province,” said Dr Samanta.
WAAC, a UNESCO-affiliated body, auspices the World Congress of Poets (WCP). The WAAC was founded in 1969 and its Golden Jubilee will be celebrated along with the 39th WCP in 2019. Though WAAC is a 50-year old institution, it has so far conducted 38 WCPs. For the third time, the World Congress of Poets is going to be held in India.
Dr Samata elaborated that in a preliminary meeting, it was tentatively decided to hold the forthcoming World Congress of Poets from October 2-6, 2019. The inaugural ceremony will be held on October 2, which also coincides with the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. “It has been planned to hold a session on tourism poetry at Konark and a session on spiritual poetry in Puri, to promote tourism and culture of Odisha, in particular, and of India, in general,” said Dr Samanta.
The Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) Deemed to be University, and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) Deemed to be University, are two prominent academic institutes in India. The former is exclusively for the professional education, having more that 30,000 student from across India and 50 countries. Despite being a very young university, KIIT has secured an impressive position of 1001+ in the global university ranking of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2019.
On the other hand, KISS is the human face of KIIT. It is a home for 50,000 tribal students—27,500 existing students, and 12,500 well-placed alumni along with more than 10,000 students in its various satellite centers. The institute provides quality education from kindergarten to post-graduation in a fully-free, fully-residential setting. KISS holds the distinction of being the only university, exclusively for tribal students in India and globally. With the backing of huge infrastructure and other world-class facilities at KIIT and KISS, the universities have proved their mettle by organising hundreds of very prominent, national and international seminars, workshops and conferences for the last 10 years.
KIIT has hosted the prestigious national and international meets like the 99th Indian Science Congress in 2012, attended by 20,000 academicians from across India and abroad. Similarly, KISS had organised the Commonwealth Big Lunch in 2018, where the High Commissioners from 50 Commonwealth countries interacted with 27,000 tribal students over lunch.
Dr Samanta also added that the Congress will see a good academic exchange as poets and writers from across the globe will come together. “I feel it will definitely give a very good boost to poets and writers in the state of Odisha and in India as well. The Odisha state government has extended its cooperation to make the 39th WCP a grand success and we are seeking the support from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India as well,” said Dr Samanta
Writer and Courtesy: The Pioneer
Though a tad late, winters have finally arrived and a cold wave is sweeping much parts of the country, affecting all and sundry, but discriminatorily. For the well off, these conditions may just be a matter of inconvenience. Some can win the war against cold by using room heaters, not minding the heavy electricity bills, or by adding more layers of woolens to keep themselves warm. For the poor though, extreme weather conditions always spell trouble — be it harsh winters or scorching summers. There is far little comfort for the poor, who spend most nights sleeping on rough Indian streets, pavements, abandoned drainpipes, temple staircases and what not. Not to forget, there are others, too, with unseen and untold miseries. This time round, though no cold wave deaths have been reported as yet, the sheer number of people taking refuge in shelter homes speaks volumes about homelessness. Consequences far outweigh the poor being just under the grip of cold. It’s the profound effect of poverty, joblessness and declining physical and mental health that act as a potent mix for cold wave deaths.
It’s not as if the situation is inevitable. In fact, it is totally avoidable but for the lack of a comprehensive strategy to tackle homelessness. Despite the sheer number of welfare schemes, only a few sections benefit actually on the ground level. Compared to other States, though Delhi has fared much better in providing rainbaseras to the homeless, it is a travesty that there are few takers, the reason being that the shelter homes with inhuman conditions have become a place for endless indignities. Besides having to do with the filthy conditions, the homeless also run the risk of falling prey to pick-pockets or becoming victims of theft from their very own peers. Worse, those among the homeless like migrant labourers, earning their bread and butter doing menial jobs like working at construction sites, also have to share the space with drug addicts and hardened criminals. The only saving grace then is that there are a few civil society groups and other people who have been doing their bit by providing them with food and woollens that thankfully reach the intended beneficiaries. While this may be the case in Delhi, the same may not be true in other States which lack in providing a roof for the homeless, even at the expense of flouting Supreme Court orders. As the cold wave now takes a toll on the toxic air we breathe, with a thicker layer of smog engulfing the atmosphere, there is little hope that we can save ourselves from the worsening situation. Until, of course, the Government, as well as the people wake up to the shameful reality and do their bit by acting responsibly.
Writer and Courtesy: The Pioneer
When LK Advani picked up and ran with the Ram Temple movement as a political project to headline the Indic impulse that had been airbrushed from post-colonial historiography, it was a major ideological intervention in national discourse albeit one that could have done without the unacceptable lumpen violence which accompanied it. Of course, there is no denying that it helped the party he helmed at the time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), electorally; whether more as cause or effect is a debate for elsewhere.
What the BJP’s current leadership needs to understand, however, is that without context we do not exist. So, to try and re-heat what it apparently thinks is the key trigger issue for the party’s core constituency — a Ram temple at Ayodhya (and for many also at disputed sites in Mathura and Kashi) — and serve it up in time for the 2019 general election is likely to end as a damp squib. Because in the main, as this article will argue, the BJP is no longer seen even by its so-called core support base as the primary vehicle which will bring these demands to fruition. That does not mean these issues are not important for millions of Indians but simply that the RSS and its affiliates, which have been agitating for and providing the theoretical framework within which these demands gained currency over the decades, today have the organisational heft, intellectual tools and agitprop ability to press their case independent of the BJP and with whichever administration that governs India.
It was Advani’s advent on the scene which, many conveniently forget, took the agitation for a Ram temple at Ayodhya and through it the project to promote a civic nationalism contextualised in an Indic civilisational tradition out of its crude, exclusivist provenance and made India pause and think about our nation-state’s trajectory post-1947. From Rajiv Gandhi to AB Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi, Narasimha Rao to George Fernandes, the leading political figures of their times, not to mention the intelligentsia, all grappled with this political-theoretical riposte to an emerging and very worrying — at least to most independent-minded, responsible citizens who did not subscribe to a doctrinaire Marxist, neo-Islamist or effete-liberal worldview — differential citizenship model premised on a negation of the notion of an Indian exceptionalism signalled by the overturning of the Shah Bano judgment and made their peace with it in different ways.
The impact of this engagement can be seen in contemporary India — from the temple-hopping spree of Congress president Rahul Gandhi during the recent Assembly polls campaign to the interventions by secular intellectuals on the zeitgeist of the Hindu/Indic tradition and the acceptance by sober thinkers of the Centre Right that lumpen violence needed to be quelled far more rigorously than it eventually was. But today the boot is on the other foot. Some of the successors of Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi in the BJP are unfortunately the rabble-rousers themselves while the Sangh Parivar has started throwing up many more thinkers of some ability, confidence and sophistication than it did in the past while its affiliates have acquired the organisational strength to demonstrate, agitate and protest to build pressure on issues close to their heart on all political parties (sans those which seek to de-legitimise it ideologically like the Communist parties).
Against the backdrop of such a landscape, the BJP, as a political party which was voted into power with a brute majority in 2014 under the leadership of Narendra Modi, is highly susceptible to the charge that it wants to rake up the emotive Ram temple issue for electoral gain just before the Lok Sabha poll. The feedback from the ground is if that is indeed what is tried, the charge will stick; if not wholly then at least very substantially. This is, naturally, not to suggest that as a political party the BJP does not have the right to lend its support to the agenda of its choice just as, say, the CPI-M has an unalienable right to demand the redistribution of wealth. All political parties also have to function within the parameters of the Constitution. It follows, therefore, that the BJP should have been working from the day it came to power four-and-a-half years to pass relevant legislation, including via joint sittings of Parliament if required given its lack of numbers in the Rajya Sabha, on this traction-generating issue for the party faithful.
But it chose, in its wisdom, to go for the low-hanging fruit such as supporting anti-cow slaughter agitations which soon descended to random vigilantism and led to a grotesque, violent and entirely unacceptable killing of human beings whom mobs set upon because they were suspected of being involved in cow smuggling/slaughter. Crucially, this issue was not something that needed to be put on the statute book as most States of the Union already had pretty stringent laws to deal with illegal cow/progeny slaughter. If the argument was that these laws were not being implemented rigorously, and there is some truth to that, then (recognised) socio-cultural organisations working in the field needed to petition respective State Governments with their concerns and build public pressure for stringent application of the law.
Why a ruling political party elected to administer the country effectively thought it appropriate to wade into this issue, especially when its credentials as an upholder of policies for cow protection as prescribed in the Constitution were not in doubt, remains inexplicable.
Now, with the elections close, any attempt by the party leadership to try and play on the issues it could have but did not take up will be subject to the law of diminishing returns. The BJP ought to resolve it will make the corrections required in its policy implementation architecture and go to the people asking for a renewed mandate on its performance, hoping for the best. The electorate, while it may overwhelmingly support the Ram temple as a matter of faith, is showing welcome signs from a governance-accountability perspective of voting on development. If the Ram temple and development-governance are posited as binaries, the BJP’s so-called core issue is likely to get trumped even among the non-card holding simpatico.
In any case, the Ram temple is far too important and sensitive an issue for political-electoral theatre. There needs, ideally, to be omnibus legislation for temples at Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi as part of an inclusive, non-denominational national project on the lines of the reconstruction of Somnath with the participation of as many Indians as possible regardless of ethnicity, jaati and mode of worship. That is unlikely though not impossible in the few months left before the General Election. To be blunt, however, a Vajpayee may have managed it but the current dispensation does not have a leader of that calibre. But then a Vajpayee also couldn’t get a decisive mandate like Modi did, so the ironies of history continue apace.
In the interim, socio-cultural organisations, faith-based outfits and advocacy groups working on the ground and through the legal system on the Ayodhya issue are best placed to take ownership of it and work on having a clear roadmap on dealing with whichever party comes to power at Centre to ensure its implementation. If it’s the BJP, it should be asked to learn from its mistakes; if it’s the Opposition, it should be asked not to repeat them. Is the Congress listening?
(The writer is a senior journalist, a media consultant and commentator on contemporary affairs.)
Writer: Ishan Joshi
Courtesy: The Pioneer
A first meeting of the newly constituted India-China High Level Mechanism on Cultural and People-to-People Exchanges will be held on December 21 in New Delhi. It will be co-chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Wang Yi, State Councillor and Chinese Foreign Minister. The decision to establish this new mechanism arose during the post-Doklam encounter between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in Wuhan this April.
Both sides are now keen to build a greater synergy through people-to-people ties in order to enhance “exchanges in areas such as tourism, art, films, media, culture, sports and academic and youth exchanges.” This sounds good; though in the past, India has been put to sleep by promises of ‘greater synergy.’ New Delhi should certainly not forget the fact that China relentlessly enhances its presence on the Indian frontiers, particularly north of Arunachal Pradesh and near Ladakh.
A report tabled in the Lok Sabha by the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs pointed to the dichotomy: “It comes as a matter of concern to the committee that even when India is overtly cautious about China’s sensitivities while dealing with Taiwan and Tibet, China does not exhibit the same deference while dealing with India’s sovereignty concerns.”
For the committee, given China’s muscular approach, it is difficult “to be content with India continuing with its conventionally deferential foreign policy towards China.” But the mandarins of South Block are absolutely unable to see this. It has been one of the greatest tragedies of modern India. There are, however, ways for India and China to build the trust long-cherished by Indian leaders.
Since the end of the 1950s, the Tibet issue has been an impediment to better relations between the two countries. Why is it so? There are many reasons but the most obvious one is simply because before the occupation of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army in 1950/51, India had a special bond with that region which had different facets: One religious (the Buddha dharma is born in India); one cultural (the Himalayan belt in India shares many values and affinities with the northern neighbours); another is economic (for centuries India and Tibet traded across the passes).
Pilgrimage played an important role in this special relationship. New pilgrimage routes can strengthen people-to-people contacts and become a true Confidence Building Measure (CBM) between China and India. For this, the present scope of the Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra (KMY) needs to be extended. The 1954 Panchsheel Agreement lapsed in April 1962 and six months later, India and China fought a bitter war over Tibet, the main subject of the agreement. The objective of the accord was to regulate trade and pilgrimage from India to Tibet and vice-versa.
The agreement specified a few points of entry into Tibet: “Traders and pilgrims of both countries may travel by the following passes and routes: Shipki-la pass, Mana pass, Niti pass, Kungri Bingri pass, Darma pass and Lipulekh pass.” Apart from the first one located in Himachal Pradesh, the other passes lie in today’s Uttarakhand.
It is only in the early 1980s that Beijing officially agreed to reopen the KMY. Since then, the yatra is being organised every year by the Ministry of External Affairs. Yatris have to walk via Pittoragarh district before crossing into Tibet at Lipulekh pass. In 2014, a second extremely long route was opened via Nathu-la pass in Sikkim. As a CBM, other traditional yatras could be reopened — one of them is the Tsari pilgrimage.
In the Tibetan psyche, Tsari has always been synonymous with a ‘sacred place’. With the Mt Kailash and the Amye Machen in eastern Tibet, the pilgrimage around the Dakpa Shelri, the ‘Pure Crystal Mountain’, has for centuries been one of the holiest of the Roof of the World. The ‘Pure Crystal Mountain’ lies at 5,735 metres above the sea, north of today’s Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh.
The yatra has the particularity to cross over from Tibet to Arunachal Pradesh and return to Tibet. Toni Huber, one of the foremost scholars on the subject, wrote: “The large-scale, 12-yearly circumambulation of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims around the mountain known as the Rongkor Chenmo had the character of a state ritual for the Ganden Phodrang [Tibetan Government] …Pilgrims in this huge procession crossed the McMahon Line below the frontier village of Migyitun in Tsari district.”
After crossing the Tibet-India border, the pilgrimage proceeded southwards along the Tsari Chu (river) and then turned westwards to follow the Subansiri, to finally cross back into Tibet to reach the first frontier village in Chame county. The southern leg of the Rongkor procession used to pass through the tribal Tsari/Subansiri areas.
Despite the fact that it crossed into India, New Delhi always facilitated the Tsari pilgrimage on the Indian side of the border till 1956. Today, with no solution in sight to solve the border dispute between China and India, the re-opening of the Rongkor pilgrimage could be a significant CBM between India, China and the Tibetan Buddhist population from both sides of the border.
Regarding the logistics, it should be much easier since India has been working on infrastructure in the area, while China has already undertaken development on its side, particularly in Yumed region. Another area of possible contact is between Ladakh and western Tibet. For centuries, the trade and pilgrimage route for the Kailash-Manasarovar region followed the course of the Indus, passed Demchok, the last Ladakhi village, and then crossed the border to reach the first Tibetan settlement, Tashigang, some 15 miles inside Tibet.
A way forward could be to re-open this route for the KMY pilgrims in a first step; the next one should be to re-open the border for trade. Remember the skirmishes at the end of the 1960s in Sikkim! When the Nathu-La pass was officially re-opened to trade in July 2006, it had the effect of ‘fixing’ the border, drastically reducing tensions in the area. Considering the ‘Nathu-La’ effect, re-opening the Demchok route could be an efficient CBM between India and China. There would be an additional benefit — it would stop smuggling between China and Ladakh, which poses serious security risks of infiltration for India. We could add to the list the re-opening of the KMY via Mana in Uttarakhand — it would probably be the easiest route. If China is interested in creating a good feeling among the Indian population, it should agree to this small gesture.
(The writer is an expert on India-China relations and an author)
Writer: Claude Arpi
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Roping in industry stakeholders, entrepreneurs, and farmers, The National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management or NIFTEM aina at increasing the capacity building in the food processing industry. Dr Chindi Vasudevappa, the institutes Vice Chancellor, has a one-on-One with Ankita Saxena and talks about the ways to grow the ready-to-eat and processed food industry
What are the latest developments at NIFTEM?
NIFTEM is progressively growing and has been on a consistent development pathway. I can confidently say that we are very well-established in terms of our instructional facilities, the laboratories and even the incubation facility, which is new and has come up during the last one year. We have already conducted the trial run and are now planning to bring in the budding entrepreneurs to work at these facilities on a semi-commercial basis to produce products and variants suitable for the Indian market and cuisine. We are on the final stages of the tender process and will soon finalise the same by the end of this month. The preliminary evaluation of the food testing laboratory has been completed and we are now awaiting the final evaluation for recognisition by NABL and will then make the lab functional. We have already met the mandatory requirements to utilise these facilities to bring in more people into the food processing arena.
How is NIFTEM working in the field of ready-to-eat product category?
The ready-to-eat, ready-to-cook products and many other freeze-dried products are being worked upon which can be taken anywhere and cooked. We are also working on enhancing their shelf life. So basically, in freeze drying, we remove the moisture content and maintain the quality of the product. For example, mushrooms and some important fruits can be freeze-dried, packed and be stored at cooler temperatures, to be used at any time. Some products like tomato puree, tomato juice, ketchup and sauces can be processed thermally, and then packed in tins, bottles or sachets, branded, and sold to the public. Even the fruits can be processed into juices, pulp, concentrates. All these activities are going to come up in a big way at the Incubation Centre in a month’s time and we will start the production. The entrepreneurs at the incubation facility may brand the products in their own name but each of these products will have an indication that they have been manufactured at the NIFTEM Incubation Facility.
What has been the key focus of the food testing lab?
In todays’ quality conscious world, we have to give details regarding not only the composition of the product but also the pesticide, anti-biotic and heavy metal residues from the health point of view. Thus, we need to conduct a thorough evaluation at various levels. The microbes are the major enemies which spoil food so we need to conduct a proper evaluation of the various pathogenic micro-organisms which, if at all are present, need to be discarded. The testing has to be done at physical, chemical, biological as well as on a sensory level, all of which are present here. The reason we want to make this process a little commercial is because, many food products and raw materials, which are exported, need a similar certification. So, if can provide the certification, we will be able to generate some revenue and maintain the lab simultaneously.
There is talk of a specialised facility for cold-chain development. What are your views on this?
We are planning to establish a Cold-Chain Development School which is also a lab, to understand how the linkages and activities related to food processing can be managed in India. The fresh produce from the farms needs to be transported in a cooler environment to the locations where it can be processed or value added. The grading and primary processing is also value addition but for this, the quality of the original produce has to be maintained. We have collaborated with Danfos in this regard, to set up a lab here. So, the different cut sections required for training is being looked at and I believe it is going to be a very important facility for the entire country.
How effective has the Village Adoption programme been for the students and the community?
We have already sent 17-18 batches of students for this outreach programme to villages in Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. We are also changing its format. Earlier, the students would visit the villages in every semester for a shorter duration, but once the new format is made functional, the students will visit the villages for one semester for 36 days. Under this programme, the students work with the local farmers, demonstrate the technological advancements to boost production, and also educate them on importance of cleanliness. We have linked the students to the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVKs) of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR). Our main objective is capacity building for entrepreneurship and skill development. We have asked the farmers to send a list of those who may want to further train in various aspects of food processing and these will be linked to the pilot projects as well. It is a symbiotic system; while villagers gain scientific and technical knowledge through students, who promote future possibilities of food processing among them, the students obtain first-hand experience of the Indian rural scenario and understand traditional processing technologies adopted by the villagers. They are able to then also facilitate the process of integrating the underprivileged sections of our population with the main stream.
What role can NIFTEM play to assist exports of processed food?
Basmati rice, which is exported by India to the world alone brings in substantial foreign exchange annually. There is a demand for processed meat products from the Gulf countries, fish and shrimps from the American and European countries. Gradually, traditional food products, which have a regional taste can be popularised in the international market. There is a lot of demand for Indian curries and spices in the global marketplace and this can be leveraged. However, since we process only 10 per cent of our produce, we export a very small percentage of these products. The whole purpose of NIFTEM is to increase our capacity manpower and the awareness about quality and demand for processed food and also produce the same. I think, at least 30 per cent of the food produced should be processed. We can then easily standardise them and scale up exports.
What are the challenges in the food processing industry? How do you think these can be addressed?
The manpower in this industry is very low, which is a major challenge. The production system is also weak, since a major per cent of the raw material is produced by small holder farms. They are unable to meet the requirements in terms of quality and lack the facility to bring the produce to one place for further processing. Though farmer producer organisations have come up, their effectiveness remains an issue. I also feel that there is a need to reform the leasing policy. We need to make it possible to allow the leasee to avail credit on leased land for contract farming and produce crops which are good for processing. Also, in India, a substantial percentage of the land area is a dry farm where water is not enough and thus the farmers depend on monsoons. They have to face the vagaries of weather changes and hence, are unable to manage their production to meet the cost of production. We need to provide them with some guarantee of food production systems, which could be through water management, soil nutrient management, integrated pest management and good quality seeds to take care of their production.
Writer: Ankita Saxena
Courtesy: The Pioneer
For a party that appeared to be in an existential crisis, the Congress has much to cheer about following its win in three big States — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — this month. Success in elections is always heartening and it becomes even better given the fact that the Congress has been in a political wilderness since 2014. Though it seemed the BJP had all the momentum since 2004, the saffron space has shrunk a little after December 11, 2018. The challenge now for the Congress leadership is to take the momentum forward until the 2019 Lok Sabha election in which stakes are very high for both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP-led NDA. After all, momentum does matter in politics. A diminished BJP is not going to sit quiet and allow the Congress to have a free run in the 2019 poll. It might even redouble its efforts to win the general election. Narendra Modi is an assertive Prime Minister and might re-package himself and reintroduce ‘brand Modi’ in a different mould. In all probability, alternative politics might gain momentum if Congress chief Rahul Gandhi goes the right way and projects a new narrative for himself and his party as going by the poll results, people are willing to give him a chance.
Gandhi’s priority should be to set his organisation, which has shrunk electorally, and redouble efforts for Opposition unity. The Congress is now at number four position in States such as West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. It also finished at the third or fourth place in other States as well. Many sections, like the Dalits, tribals, upper castes and even Muslims have drifted away. The BJP’s strength is that it is a cadre-based organisation; it has unlimited resources, best communication skills and a wonderful propaganda machine. Internally, the young Gandhi has chosen to go with the old guard. The message became clearer with his choice of Chief Ministers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. He more or less told the youth that younger leaders will be allowed to build their profiles, even if that means they have to wait a bit longer for leadership roles.
Second, he must focus on building alliances. Even with the wind in its sails, the Congress is faced with challenges. The Opposition parties have inherent contradictions but Gandhi has been showing some boldness. He walked with Jignesh Mewani and Hardik Patel in Gujarat, which helped the party reduce the BJP’s numbers in the State. Similarly, the decision to support the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka earlier this year, to stop the BJP from forming the Government, also showed his political adventurism. Besides, the party has tied up with alliance partners in different States like Bihar, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand. Further, it is in the process of aligning with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. The Grand Old Party has to keep the UPA flock together and also expand wherever necessary. As a bigger party, the Congress has to be flexible in sharing seats with other regional parties.
Third, he has to build a new narrative. It may not be enough to indulge just in Modi-bashing and negative campaigning. Gandhi successfully tapped political resentment of the farmers against the BJP Government as also discontent among the unemployed. These are the two major issues that helped him win the three States. Negative sentiments circling demonetisation and GST, too, helped. The caste factor played its role for the grand old party.
The fourth option is to stitch Opposition unity. The success in Assembly polls has given Gandhi a new image and he must now be able to reach out to senior leaders and regional Opposition parties and ensure that the Congress is able to anchor the coalition. Following the Karnataka polls, the Opposition showed interest in forming a ‘grand alliance’ which fell apart with the BSP and SP moving away. It is now clear that the prime ministerial face of the Opposition will be decided only in a post-poll scenario. These parties can do the trick if they come together and make sure that Opposition votes are undivided. In fact, Modi’s strength lies in Opposition disunity. The road to success in 2019 is challenging but Rahul Gandhi has made a good start. Despite setbacks, the BJP remains a formidable opponent and must not be taken lightly. As Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley pointed out, the BJP won the same three States in December 2003 but lost the 2004 general election. Hence, the Congress should not be carried away by the present success. It has won the battle but not the war as yet. Time is very short and Opposition parties must decide their course of action now itself.
(The writer is a senior political commentator)
Writer: Kalyani Shankar
Source: The Pioneer
A quick glance at the recent Assembly poll results will invariably lead to a fallacious conclusion that the Congress, with three additional major States in its kitty, is the sole winner, and BJP, a clear loser. There is little doubt that the election outcome is confusing. The electorate has voted the Congress to power without rejecting the BJP. While in Chhattisgarh, the Congress’ victory is convincing and clear, so are its defeats in Telangana and Mizoram.
In Madhya Pradesh (a State with the largest number of seats, 29, in the Lok Sabha, out of the five States that went to polls), the losing BJP got marginally more votes than the victorious Congress. The BJP, even after bagging 47,827 more votes than its immediate rival, had to concede defeat. The BJP had polled 1,56,42,980 votes and the Congress 1,55,95,153. Thanks to the infirmities of our electoral systems, the BJP had to contend with 109 seats and the Congress romped home with 114 seats, two short of majority.
In fact, had the BJP polled 4,337 more votes than it did in seven seats in Madhya Pradesh, it could have well crossed the majority mark. The seven seats which it lost by a slender difference are Gwalior South (121), Suwasra (350), Jabalpur North (578), Rajnagar (732), Damoh (798), Biaora (826) and Rajpur (932).
The Congress, on the other hand, suffered a loss of only three seats — Jarora (511), Bina (632) and Kolaras (720) — with a small margin. In contrast, in 2013, the BJP’s victory in Madhya Pradesh was decisive. The party polled 44.88 per cent votes against 36.38 per cent by the Congress.
In Rajasthan (25 Lok Sabha seats) the margin between the victor and vanquished was razor thin. The Congress’ share of votes was 39.3 per cent, 0.5 per cent higher than that of the BJP’s 38.8 per cent.
The Chhattisgarh results, of course, should set the BJP worrying for the party’s defeat here was convincing. Its vote share dropped from 41 per cent in 2013 to 33 per cent and that of the Congress improved, from 40.3 per cent to 43 per cent. While the Congress has won the three heartland States, it has all but bowed out of the North-East, losing its last government in Mizoram.
What is the political message of this verdict? Prime Minister Modi’s detractors will see the results as a precursor to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. But unfortunately for them, each election has a different nuance and undertone. In March 1998, the BJP won 182 Lok Sabha seats and the Congress dropped to 141. By end of that year, Assembly elections were held in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The BJP was routed. Four months later, in April 1999, the Vajpayee Government fell by one vote. Fresh parliamentary elections followed. The BJP under Vajpayee was back in power at the Centre, winning all seven seats from Delhi and performing well in the Hindi heartland.
In early 2004, the BJP leadership dissolved the Lok Sabha and advanced parliamentary elections by five months because in December 2003, it swept polls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The Vajpayee-Advani duo thought that results of these Hindi heartland States reflected the general mood in favour of the NDA and, thus, an early parliamentary election would help them easily return to power. However, the BJP lost.
Fast forward to December 2013, the BJP lost the Assembly election to a newly-founded Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, but won all seven Lok Sabha seats in the April-May 2014 parliamentary elections. The election results have a lesson for the prognosticators of the mahagathbandhan as well. The Congress-TDP-Left coalition was supposed to give a tough fight to the ruling TRS and dethrone Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. However, the KCR-led TRS won 88 of 119 seats. Its poll percentage was 46.9, way ahead of the Congress’ 28.4 per cent. Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP only won two seats.
Incidentally, poll results were declared the day Rahul Gandhi completed one year as president of his family fiefdom. The post-poll developments — his choice of Kamal Nath for Madhya Pradesh and efforts to buy peace in Rajasthan by virtue of a patch-up arrangement between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot — provide indications as to how the party will function under his leadership. Kamal Nath’s selection by Rahul Gandhi underlines the fact that the Congress will continue to give precedence to political expediency over ethics or high principles. Kamal Nath, one of the richest politicians in the country, has been accused of leading violent mobs against beleaguered Sikhs in 1984 during the riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
Here are excerpts from a book, When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath, by HS Phoolka, an advocate and Manoj Mitta, a journalist. The book was published a decade ago and Kamal Nath has not gone to the court against the charges levelled against him. “The leader in question was Kamal Nath, who was at the time of the 1984 carnage, an up and coming Congress MP from Madhya Pradesh. In a siege that lasted over five hours, Kamal Nath is said to have been there for about two hours.
“Given the strategic location of Rakab Ganj Gurudwara, Kamal Nath’s presence at the site of violence was confirmed by two of the senior-most police officers, Commissioner Subhash Tandan, and Additional Commissioner Gautam Kaul, as also by an independent source, The Indian Express reporter, Sanjay Suri.
“Another distinguishing feature of the Rakab Ganj episode was the evidence of political complicity: The presence of Congress MP Kamal Nath on the spot for a major part of the siege. That he was there at all, for whatever reason, given that the other Congress leaders were discreet enough not to hobnob with mobs in places where they were liable to be noticed by journalists.
“Since Kamal Nath spent about two hours in front of Rakab Ganj Gurudwara Gate on November 1, The Indian Express reported the next day that he had led the mob. The interference of his complicity was no reflex reaction, as made clear by journalist Sanjay Suri, in his report, as also in his affidavit before the Misra Commission, and oral deposition before the Nanavati Commission.
“Suri found that Kamal Nath was ‘controlling the crowd’ which he said was looking to him for direction. Though he could not vouch for what exactly Kamal Nath had told the crowd, Suri said that ‘some mobs had charged at the gurudwara’ in the Congress leader’s presence. Equally significant, he testified that while all that drama was going on, the bodies of those Sikhs were still burning on the roadside”.
An interesting sidelight of the recently conducts polls was that the EVM’s credibility was restored. Except for a feeble attempt to question its working in Telangana, the Congress happily accepted the verdict in the rest of the four States.
(The writer is a political commentator and a former BJP Rajya Sabha MP)
Writer: Balbir Punj
Courtesy: The Pioneer
As BJP is losing control and the Congress regaining it, there are lessons for all national parties. It’s now time to focus more on policies and less on hollow sloganeering.
The Assembly election results of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have not only set the template for the Lok Sabha election, which is expected to be announced in the first week of March next year, but has also clearly drawn the battle lines for what is expected to be one of the fiercest elections ever. For the Congress, the biggest takeaway from the polls is, undoubtedly, the emergence of Rahul Gandhi as an unassuming leader who has shed his past baggage of indifference, political immaturity and dynasty to come on his own. For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the biggest setback has been the demolition of the myth and hype built around the invincibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah.
Till these elections took place, the BJP had become one big electoral juggernaut, very convincingly demolishing one political opponent after the other. The routine rout of the Opposition in the elections had built an aura of invincibility around the Modi-Shah duo — the mass connect of Modi and the Chanakya-like strategy of Shah had become a part of political punditry and was also instilled as an ideal combination in some of the BJP-RSS workers.
On the contrary, repeated defeats had affected even the body language of the Congress leaders, who went into a defeatist mode, occasionally without putting up any fight, like in Goa. Rahul Gandhi and pappu had almost become synonymous, popularised as it was by WhatsApp groups of the BJP’s IT cell. So much so that there was a time when even die-hard Congress workers started believing the falsehoods doing the rounds on how ineffective Rahul Gandhi was as a leader and how his stewardship was taking the party towards peril.
December 11, 2018, changed this political narrative for all time to come. Its developments have come barely three months before the announcement of the general election, triggering a political tsunami and throwing open all sorts of possibilities. All of a sudden, there is a spring in the steps of the Congress workers while in the BJP, an element of doubt has crept in.
This brings forth the most plausible question: Will the Modi magic work or not? Even though party spokespersons keep hammering the fact that the Prime Minister’s personal integrity is intact and that issues for Assembly and Lok Sabha polls are entirely different, this is hardly convincing for both sceptics and supporters. They know it well that victory in the Assembly elections in these very States five years ago, in 2013, had set the ball rolling for the saffron party and it built on the momentum of the wave in May 2014.
Five years down the line, that pace is now with the Congress and it will expectedly follow it till the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. In fact, the Grand Old Party was building a thrust ever since it made crucial headway in the Gujarat Assembly polls in December 2017, where for the first time, Modi had to campaign really hard and Shah had to use all his electoral arithmetic to romp home. A resurgent Congress had given the BJP a run for its money in a State which for long had been considered a laboratory for Hindutva politics.
There was more to follow. Karnataka was widely billed to go the BJP way. This is what the spin doctors of the party had projected — the sulking Yeddyurappa was back with the BJP, moneybags were with the party managers, the Congress Government was facing anti-incumbency and what not. Everything was supposedly going for the BJP and against the Congress. But that was not to be. The BJP failed to get a majority on its own. “Congress-mukt Bharat was too arrogant a slogan,” said a BJP leader on condition of anonymity, adding that this was a classic case of unrealistic politics, bereft of grassroots reality. He hoped that this slogan would never be raised now, and even if it did, it would instantly become a matter of ridicule.
Similarly, the systematic targeting of the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were in bad taste and the appropriation of other Congress stalwarts by extolling the virtues of the likes of Sardar Patel and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose did not quite have the intended effect. “Leave historical figures alone for history books and academic discussions, not for electoral rhetoric and as poll issue,” summed up the leader.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha poll, obviously, the BJP will try to turn it into some sort of a presidential election, pitching Modi versus Rahul, and asking people if they would vote for an untested, unwilling and timid leader or go for the qualities of “a time-tested, strong face with muscular politics.”
The BJP’s second strategy would be to polarise the election with a strong pitch for building the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. But given the fact that the issue has already been milked to the hilt by the party for over the last quarter of a century and which yielded rich electoral dividends up to a point, this plank has reached a saturation level. The BJP can no longer hope for the same result and the law of diminishing returns will automatically apply. This is what happened in the three States.
So what’s the way forward for the BJP? First, it has to abandon the Congress-mukt Bharat pitch. Second, it must draw a list of achievements of its major decisions — demonetisation and GST — and keep hammering about their long-term benefits repeatedly and see how much traction it gets. Third, now that it has been cleared by the Supreme Court in the Rafale jet deal, it should keep the Opposition in the loop for future acquisitions rather than being defensive about them. Fourth, it would have to stop pitchforking the Modi-Shah axis and democratise its intra-party discourse. “At present, party MPs are treated more like booth-level workers to whom directions are hurled and there is no process of consultation or listening involved,” a BJP MP told this writer after the poll results.
Last but not the least, it would have to stop polarisation of votes through hawkish leaders like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He will hardly attract any new votes as the Assembly elections of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where he campaigned extensively, have proved that there aren’t many takers for the religion card. At the same time, it would damage the body politic of India. Already, banners have come up in Lucknow extolling the hardliner Yogi as “Prime Minister material” and Modi has been painted as some sort of a liberal.
Similarly, what’s the way forward for the Congress? Right now it is the default Opposition party in several States and is expecting to get the anti-incumbency votes from those who expected too much from the first majority Government of the BJP in decades. This complacency has to end. First, it has to come out with an aggressive and workable solution to the problems it has been highlighting. It should spell out what it would do to solve farm distress beyond loan waivers. Second, if traders and small enterprises are distressed, what is the solution to the woes? Third, offending slogans like “chowkidar chor hai” should be banned; it is similar to “Congress-mukt Bharat” and even worse.
It should articulate what its policies would be at the Centre and how different they would be from the ones followed by the BJP Government? It also has to spell out its plan for job creation and how it proposes to go about it.
The days of sloganeering are over. The youth had a lot of expectations in 2014 and will have similar expectations in 2019 as well. Hollow and emotive slogans will no longer yield electoral dividends. Both parties should come with policies, which are implementable with details of how they intend to proceed. That would be the key to gaining the trust of our electorate.
(The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer, Chandigarh)
Writer: Amitabh Shukla
Courtesy: The Pioneer
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