A TRUE HERO

All of us, every family, every society, every country needs help from unsung heroes to rise above mediocrity. In a world which is full of uncertainty sometimes true heroes end up being the anonymous ones. We tend to look at a person's success, popularity, and even virtues, but how about someone who is just there for you. In life there is always that one moment when you need someone, you need that support which reinforces you & helps you achieve those goals. Most of the time this comes from people that truly go unnoticed. You don’t even realize their importance in your life till they are gone but when you do, it becomes incumbent to acknowledge it with honesty, talk to them, hear their thoughts and when they are no more in this world, to shed some tears for them.

One and half years ago, my youngest cousin, cried that he didn’t get into Harvard and had to choose between Yale and Brown for his undergraduate. On my maternal side, we are twenty of us including the spouses and in one generation from me, the first person to study and graduate from a US university to Anuj, eleven of us have had the privilege and opportunity to attend world’s best teaching institutes, the success is not only the colleges and universities we attended but, also the fact most of us were able to pursue a liberal education which has made us world travelling, free thinking, entrepreneurs & artists. Most of us are able to pursue our dreams rather than worry where our next meal will come from. That is a true measure of success, however, this success is built on one man’s sacrifice more than anyone else.

On my paternal side, we were borderline poor; a family, which had lost all its money hastily and had neither means nor any way to recover it back, apart from a slow gradual, fight back. On my maternal side, my granddad was a simple army man with eight children. As his children started growing up, the need to educate, feed, clothe and give them a decent life became difficult on his meager army salary. The choice was to cut down the quality of a few aspects of these necessities or seek help from outside. Hence, the decision that the elder children will live with their maternal uncle was taken. He not only took them in, but also, gave them opportunities to grow and excel.

It was the early part of the 20^th century, he was born on the 9^th July 1929 to a clerk in the Indian Army. He was the only brother to his 4 sisters. Parents adored him, but his sisters doted on him more than his parents. He was younger than 3 of them and until the very end, he remained their little brother. He was named ‘Ratan Narayan Shrivastava’, he was my mother’s maternal uncle. Let us call him RN.

The family atmosphere was predominantely religious and full of rituals. Mother was an overtly pious woman and she passed that to all her children. Though the father was a fairly educated person but was quite superstitious, this later came to haunt RN’s life.

As far as we know, his childhood was mostly happy, travelling from cantonments to cantonments across central India. He had anecdote and stories from all those places. Education was important and hence he was pushed to excel in school, however, he was academically average at best. Though later he showed a particular analytical brain, which always held him in good esteem.

He joined ‘Sagar University’ for his college and there he became an avid cricketer. Even at 5’4 was an amazing fast bowler; with a slinging action he was knocking off many a batting line-ups. One of my earliest memories is when me as a 5 or 6 years old & ‘Neta mama’ (my maternal uncle), had gone to see him play in an inter-office match, to our surprise by the time we reached there the match was almost over as RN had knocked the opposition out for 50 odd runs by taking 7 or 8 wickets. He even won the man of the match for his performance.

(Sidenote: For a long time,  I had his MoM prize with me. It was a small little plastic tray. However, I lost it, it felt like I had lost a piece of my own history.)

It was not predetermined, but he chose numbers to be his profession, he joined the Accountants General MP office. His lack of ambition combined with resolute ethics were key hindrances in elevating him in the ranks. It was his analytical mindset and unhurried calm, which kept his work professional and ethical.

The unsuccessful personal life and not marrying must have had a big impact on him. Supposedly, he had decided to marry some girl, however, his father rejected that match as the ‘kundlis’ didn’t match. He just gave up on the marriage after that. His younger sister remained a spinster too. They both became each other’s pillars of strength. She encouraged & consoled him and he asked for her guidance and opinion on almost everything. His emotional stability with that single focus on the betterment of others must have come from a disappointment of not marrying. He always thought that he had the additional responsibility to take care of ‘Rajjan mausi’. I don’t think he was an asexual person or ever became one, I think it was just circumstances which kept him away from marriage.  He and ‘Rajjan mausi’ became do-gooders and both were eager to help anyone & everyone, all the time. So for the rest of his life, doing good took precedence over just being good.

My dad and my mom's family were acquainted with each other much before they got married. Hence, my eldest metarnal uncle, 'Rai Mama' became friends with my dad in college. One day he decided to visit the room that my dad was renting while studying in Bhopal. Here he found out that it was a squalid one room with no proper ventillation and all his books had to be kept at a height because the rain water was seeping through the cracks and under the door. My dad didn't have a proper place to cook his food either. When he told this to RN; RN didn't hesitate to give this almost a stranger, a place in his home and two square meals so that he could study.

When I was born, my father was posted in Bhopal and my parent's were living with RN. I lived first 6 years of my life in a small rickety 3 room house on the first and the second floor in old Bhopal. Water was scarce and had to be brought up in buckets from the road. Two full flights of floors, twice a day, for a handful of people. It was a chore that the whole family was involved in. Old Bhopal was a charming place, I still remember the five o’clock ‘aazaan’ waking me up, it was a place where we were surrounded by old ‘havelies’ and flower shops (the ‘mohalla’ was called ‘Malipura’ because most of the flower sellers had their shops there). I can’t think of ever being unhappy there.  

(Sidenote: Every time I watch Merchant-Ivory’s ‘In custody’, I feel like I am in Bhopal of my times, I remember most of those roads, I feel that I could have visited those courtyards or seen all those ‘havelies’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzLOFgVm218)

One of my early memories, when I felt the feeling of embarrassment for the first time was when my dad took me to participate in a live Sunday morning radio show for kids on 'All India Radio'. There to a question, I told the RJ that I had eaten a white ‘gulab-jamun’, the hosts of the show tried to tell me that it is called a ‘rasagulla’, but I was adamant about my white ‘gulab-jamun’. When we came back home, RN and my mom, who were listening to me on the live radio laughed at me. Now it struck me  that I had said something funny and I was red-faced.

Though he was a magnanimous person, he did have an autocratic streak in him. He disliked when anyone went to the cinema. My mom loves movies and she still enjoys them more than anyone I know. Every time my dad, mom or uncles would dress up for the movies he would throw tantrums and not let them go. I think it was more of a control issue than his dislike for movies. I remember going to some movie with my mom and dad and I was specifically told not to tell RN about it. His sisters, nephews, and nieces were kind of scared of him, they never confronted him and he remained like that for many more years to come.

RN was always a quirky fellow. One of his major quirkiness was to collect everything from magazines, empty matchboxes, to expired lottery tickets. Yes, you read it right, he had an obsession for buying lottery tickets and though most of us would throw away the old ones, he used to collect them. I still remember in an old cupboard where he had stacks of them along with all kinds of other stuff. His favorite magazine to buy used to be an Urdu film magazine, called ‘Shama’. By the looks of it, it was quite pedestrian, however, because it was in ‘Nastaliq’ no one else could read it. Much later he started to subscribe to Reader’s Digest and a random magazine, which was all about various kinds of puzzles and riddles and in-mail competitions. He was Dilip Kumar fan in a house full of Devanand fans and he did look like him in his younger days.  

One morning RN took me along with papa and 'neta mama' to see the ‘Muharram’ procession, as a five-year-old it had left an undeniable impact. I still remember this one guy's face as he hit himself with barbed wire and blood was oozing out. Yet in the evening he had taken me to the ‘mela’, there for the first time, I had seen and eaten a ‘roomali roti’ at a kiosk. I don’t remember what had he bought me from there, but it was something that I cherished and was overjoyed to get it. Maybe it was just a balloon, but it really doesn’t matter when you are a kid.

As time went by, my dad got posted to Chhindwara and we moved out of his home. A year later I moved to MHOW to live with my grandparents. By now, I was in the 2^nd grade and now Bhopal home just became a stopover during our travels. But my brother and I always looked forward to stopping there. We loved the double fried, ‘aaloo bada’, he used to get for us in the morning, or looking out towards old Bhopal from our terrace, and even walking along those narrow lanes which were bustling with activity. This made us happy. I am not sure why, but it felt more like a home than anywhere else. Every time he visited MHOW, he gave me more pocket money than anyone else, I was left a bit richer and that felt good.

Fortunately, for him that during the Union Carbide tragedy of 1984, he wasn’t in Bhopal. When the time to claim the compensation came, most of his friends took it. They insisted that he should also register. He flatly refused on the grounds that it would be unethical for someone who wasn’t affected to claim it.

My next real chance to live with him happened when he moved back to MHOW after his retirement. It was 1987 or 88. He still kept the Bhopal house, but he was living in MHOW with my grandparents. I will never forget when he got his retirement gratuity, he made me carry a huge amount of cash. Do not remember the exact amount, but, I had never seen such a large amount and walking with him to deposit it in a bank made me feel proud and responsible.

  

He was always known as a man with bulging briefcases. His stuff in MHOW had all kinds of things in it. If you ever went through his stuff you would find things which you never expected, old newspapers, in which you couldn’t find anything special. Random clothing items which were not his, magazines, books, lots of diaries written in Urdu and filled with numbers.  One weird habit that he had was that he used to steal photographs from people’s albums. I could never psychoanalyze this behaviour. It could be some kind of voyeurism but I attribute this to his compulsive habit of keeping mementos and memories. It annoyed people when their best photographs went missing from albums and I confess that I was livid when that happened to me. He had come to stay with me in Gurgaon and when he left  I found out that he had taken some of mine. They were of me and my 'then' girl friend’s photographs (out of which some were not so children friendly) for his collection. I lost my cool and one day when he wasn’t around, me and cousin went through his stuff in MHOW, lo and behold, there they were. All of them, more things that I had realised I was missing. I so wanted to confront him, but like always the elders in the family didn’t let me confront him.

Another extraordinary piece was his life was his interest in the stock market. His political views were mostly Leftist, he had an apprehension of Congress especially Indira Gandhi, he preferred to be in Jai Prakash Narayan’s camp. However, after the 1992 riots, he reserved his deep loathing for BJP. The 1992 riots had left him wondering where has his India gone. He had lived in Old Bhopal almost all his life in an area where at least 50% population was Muslim and he could never comprehend what would make people kill another human being in the name of religion. He disliked that religion had become something that people wore on heir sleeves, rather than something that was a part of your deep-rooted personal faith. Coming back to the stock market, I think again it was the attraction to numbers and his analytical mind which made him lean towards stock market because his political philosophy was the right opposite of the free market & profit-making enterprises. As early as 1964 he had started to invest in it. In our family, he was the most successful at it, he especially invested in the new IPOs. He even got my dad & others to invest in the stock market but with much lesser success.  

He had a wicked sense of humour, he used to catch hold of all the children and loved to rub his stubble on their cheeks. When the kids tried to squirm and wanted to run away, he used to hold them tighter and laugh uncontrollably. He has done that to almost every kid in the family. Every summer there used to fights between him and all of us cousins. In the afternoon he wanted to see his TV shows and we wanted to watch movies on an old VCR. This was a big irritant for him and always led to the confrontation. It used to end when he used to walk out in frustration by saying, ‘zara se yeh nahin ki thoda sa woh ho’, we just laughed like crazy. None of us were ever able to decipher what that sentence meant, he never explained, we never asked, just laughed. We still use it to explain unexplainable situations. Another of his mysterious quotes was ‘badi waisi hain’, he used to use it for almost anything, ‘yahan ki sadak badi waise hain’ or ‘yahan ka khana bada waisa hai’, he never explained what does that ‘waisa’ meant, we didn’t even know if it represented good or bad, I guess it was a bit of both.

Around a decade ago, his lifelong support and confidant ‘Rajjan mausi’ passed away due to cancer. He truly never recovered from it. He became a bit of a recluse and bitter with a lot of our extended family. Sometimes it got to a point where he would say things to people which he shouldn’t have. I don’t think he ever meant to say those nasty things but old age was catching up with him.

In his old age, some of his eccentricities increased. He started going on fasting for a large number of days and on these days he needed a specific diet. No one else other than my mom could deliver that. Most people couldn’t take his constant demands and hence he didn't want to live with them.  As he started to realize that more and more people didn’t conform to his logic, he became disappointed and a bit resentful. He had to throw tantrums at every wedding. Sometimes the reason could be, why wasn’t a particular guest invited or sometimes it could just be because he didn’t think that the day was auspicious. We all expected it and he never disappointed us by throwing his usual paroxysm.  One thing which perplexed all of us was his refusal to wear all his clothes. He would roam around in a vest, underwear with a towel wrapped around. He would walk out on the balcony or get out of the house to talk to people with consummate ease.  My mom used to get irritated by it. But it was banter, she never forced him and he never cared about her shouting.

What remained from his childhood was the plethora of religious rituals. He was a stickler for them. He needed to do his morning ‘puja’, evening lighting of those ‘agarbattis’ and walking up to the local temple. In the last few months, he started to make up stories about these visits to the temple. He told everyone that one day he had gotten lost and a random man helped him, he was convinced that man was ‘Hanuman’. I am not sure this was just to get some attention or he genuinely believed his own versions of the truth.

Disappointment, more than bitterness ruled last years of his life, he went into a shell and slept most of the time. All that he had stood for was crumbling all around him. The families were more and more nuclear, people sent emails which he wasn’t familiar with and he persistently cribbed about no one sending him letters anymore. His Urdu had died, but he did appreciate that I had still kept an interest in it. In these times he couldn’t live with anyone else but my mom. Though they had their arguments and my dad used to get annoyed with his idiosyncrasies. However, there was still an ability to accommodate each other, he had lost that with everyone else. Sonu, my brother, was probably the only one who had the patience to listen to him, talked to him and take him for his usual passbook updates which he was so keen on even in the times of internet banking. His constant worry was when was Sonu going to call, where was he going and when would he come back. My relationship with him had turned into a silent one, he never bothered me but was constantly concerned about me. Towards all other fellow humans, he went from benevolent to a bit intolerant, but yet he always remained a source of monetary support for everyone.

On 8^th February, he had a massive coronary thrombosis and he left all of us.

His ideas and morality were rooted in a different time and space. He was born in the era of 'The Raj' and India's independence was still a couple of decades away. Peace & prosperity were not things that you could take for granted, prayer & religion for him was an expression of his personal faith. Where he came from communication was slow but writing letters (in his case they were always postcards, never envelops or inland letters) on every possible occasion and sometimes without occasion was a duty rather than obligation. I think he missed Urdu the most, he was the last of our family who knew Urdu better than Hindi, though he could read and write Devanagari for communication but he preferred to speak Urdu and of course write in Nastaliq. Sometimes we joked that he wrote it so no one could read his thoughts.  He was a product of old decaying and yet seemingly romantic old values, the importance of family and trying to hold it together seemed important to him. He judged relationships as he saw them from his prism and never from other people’s point of view. This, of course, created disagreeable moments when for other people day-to-day pressures were stretching this rubber band of relations to a breaking point.

You could say he was embedded in his middle-class morality, though every time you argued with him it was difficult for him to justify it. He had an extraordinary sense of duty towards the family, I guess not having his children made him more passionate about it.  He wanted to judge his life with how much he had helped someone.

What RN provided was hope, hope that there is a safety net for all of us, hope that in need there was at least one person that you could turn to and he would help us to the best of his ability. A few days ago that safety net was broken and we all have to learn to stand up on our own feet. More importantly, we need to remember from where we had started and where have we reached. We all wouldn't be what we have become without him, he was our 'A TRUE HERO'.

EPITAPH:

‘

Not only those,

Who hold clear echoes of the voice divine,

Are honourable, they are blest indeed,

Whate’er the world has held – but those who hear,

Some fair faint echoes, though the crowd be deaf,

And see the white god’s garments on the hills,

Which the crowd sees not, though they may not find,

Fit music of their visions, they are blest,

Not pitiable.

Now we flee from standing firm and we stream towards evil; let us standup for goodness.
It is the final hour, the most wicked of times - be watchful!

‘

(Side note:  I have chosen Bernard of Cluny’s verse from De Contemptu Mundi because RN had almost had a monastic life, though he had lived amongst the society. Like the poem he had a major problem with the world around him. His complaints were usual, everything in the past was better, the world is facing a tough time, we are forgetting the importance of God, everyone now seems to be obsessed with money, power, and sex. Like the poem, he glorified heaven and God. For him, a certain sense of God was important and not a full devotion. However, I must point out, unlike the poem he had deep respect for women and treated them with deep care. The poem, on the other hand is probably an epitome of anti-feminism.)

How Intolerant am I?

So the debate on intolerance or rather tolerance has been raging and after trying to ignore it for some time, reluctantly here is my two cents on it.

 

The true question is, Are Indians tolerant? When I say Indians it basically distils down to, Are Hindus tolerant?

 

A couple of years ago, I met someone whom I think is a very intelligent sorted kind of a person. He said to me that India is a secular country because Hindus are a majority. Of course I was aghast at his conclusion. Not only this was generalization of a community as large as Hindus or Muslims, but also this was a very myopic view from where in the time line we are standing. I immediately knew that he had very little knowledge of early India or even the great Islamic Renaissance of 700 to 1200 AD to make that judgment.

 

But before we move into the debate, let me also clarify that there are two different Hinduism. Vedic (approx.. 1000 BC to 500 AD) and Puranik (approx.. 500 AD to today). Most of the people who follow this religion today belong to the Puranik form and not the old Vedic form. A simple and clear indication is Idol worship, which is clearly being from the Puranik period and not in the old Vedic period. Today, most Hindus seem to associate Vedic greatness as their own, but that is not the case at all.

 

The great philosophical and scientific thoughts that arose in Vedic period came about because of the free thought which prevailed then, the idea that you could question everything, including the existence of God/Gods or how to till a land properly. These could be debated in the open with very little worry any repercussions. The rise of Buddhism and Jainism are a clear indication of that openness. Gautam Buddha was as far as possible in his philosophy from the prevailing thought of those times. Even Jesus and Prophet Mohammed were not as radical as Siddhartha was from his present surroundings. Just the idea of creating a sect where morality and ethics were devoid of the concept of God is phenomenally radical.

 

As bigger cities declined, India went through physical transition and this was combined with the decline of Buddhism. A new form of Hinduism crept in. This had every ill, that we can think of in a religion. Brahmins tried to take control of the power structure of small towns and villages. This formalized and laid foundation of a rigid caste system. Control of Meat eating and particularly Beef eating led to a kind of dietary fascism. With this rise of new form of religion the decline of Indian civilization was truly on its way as scientific & free thought were discouraged.

 

This Hinduism is still being followed by the same old notions and same old Gods. Yet for some reason the adherent of this faith seems to be claiming that they are tolerant. How?

 

Let me clearly state this that Hindus in the last 1500 years have never been tolerant people. We have a very intolerant society and we are making it worse.

Look at any of these and you would realize the how tolerant as a society we have been.

1. How upper caste Hindus have treated the lower caste and the tribal populations. This has been the most brutal form of slavery. This is where the identity, self esteem and ability to think was wiped out not only for one set of people but for many many generations over a millennia. Even now the caste discrimination is deep rooted. Every few days we hear of a caste based violence and in 90% cases it is the upper cast folks brutally treating the Lower cast.

2. Look how we treat our economically deprived. You take a look at an Indian in his or her behaviour with anyone who is economically deprived, they behave with utter disdain. They laugh and make fun in the most condescending manner. The exploitation of child labour in our homes & road side is rampant.

3. How the society has treated women and how it still treats her. Even worshipping Goddesses haven’t made us treat our women better. Most people still treat them as a property and even the liberated educated women are still persecuted at work and home for their gender. This is a country where a formal method of killing a widow originated and gained precedence to the point where today they have temples for women who have committed Sati. Rape is common, it is a country where marital rape is actually allowed by law. Sexual exploitation is so rampant that it is considered to be an act of valour.

4. Look, how people treat LGBT people around us. If that is not, intolerance, what is? It is here where a prominent Guru associated with the present regime claims to have a cure for being gay. Look how all of us treat a Hijda who knocks on our door. I think this is intolerance, which reflects in our words and actions.

5. Our treatment of our minorities? Most of the present day controversy is around religious intolerance.

Our minorities are looked down upon from the word go. If you are born as one in this country you are fighting against the odds from the very beginning.

If you are of a minority religion, leave aside being a Muslim, try being a Sikh and then try to get an apartment in Mumbai. If you are not discriminated, I would pay your rent. Ever try sending a resume to a firm with a Muslim name and see how many times they call you back. The sad part is this is so ingrained in our society that when someone makes a generalized comment that Muslims behave this way or Christians do this we don’t even bat an eyelid. There is no one to stand up and fight for their identity and cause.

As Muslims started settling in India, it largely was quite transition. (Don’t confuse this with the Islamic rulers attacking the throne of Delhi). But, there are very few instances in the world where it happened the way it happened in India. Even millennia later you can see there has been no assimilation. In a village, Hindu areas and houses normally do not co-exist with Muslims. I wonder why? Merging of religion happened at a superficial level but rarely a new thought of a common religion came out. Or even when it came out it was thwarted very quickly, sometimes by ruling Muslim elites, but mostly by Brahmin dominated structure of Hindusims.

Another aspect of this has been that the politicians and the right wing people keep pointing out how the Muslim rulers used to persecute their Hindu subjects, but have they ever looked at the power struggles between Shaviks and Vaishnavs. That was equally brutal, they might have actually led to more people being killed and more temples being destroyed. In the last phases of Buddhism in India, Hindu rulers were equally discriminatory and cruel towards Buddhist monks and subjects.

6. Look at our feudal lords, they were kings of the bygone era and politicians now. Look how they treat common people. Try raising your voice against any of them.

7. Ever looked at how Indians treat people of darker complexion. Leave aside Blacks, we even are intolerant towards our own kids who have a darker complexion.

 

HOW ARE WE A TOLERANT SOCIETY? I fail to understand. I know some people might say that the cases that I am pointing out to are of discrimination and not per say intolerance. But I refuse to make that distinction. No discrimination comes without intolerance.

 

When likes of, Shahrukh or Amir says that there is a rise in intolerance we should pay attention. When people of their stature see and say that there is discrimination and intolerance, think about people who do not have a voice.

 

What should the Government or people in power do? I am always reminded of a story, which heard on TV. C Rajagopalachari and Nehru never got along, they had vast difference in opinion. One was the working head of independent India and other its figurehead. After Gandhi Ji & then Sardar Patel passed away, Nehru often went to Raja Ji for his counsel. One day when one of his senior colleagues asked him why does he go to Raja Ji when he disagrees with him all the time. He quoted Gandhi, ‘He is the keeper of my conscience, without him I wouldn’t know what am I doing wrong.’ I know that these were a different class of people, but it at least this tells us to keep our critics close to us and listen to them.

 

And critics of this piece, Don’t even compare India to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, that is the stupidest thing you can do. Also, please don’t give me the logic that the US also has intolerance and discrimination, again that would be an idiotic logic.

 

Think of a Young, Poor, Lesbian, Lower cast, Muslim(yes, there is castism in Indian Muslims too) woman, living in a small village with no guardian to protect her. Think of her perils and then talk about tolerance. Till she is treated with respect, dignity and gets her full rights as a citizen this debate is futile that India & Hindus are tolerant.

What Next?

So Congress party has suffered one of its heaviest defeats in these By-Elections, the question is where does it go from here. There are various ways to evaluate these results, BJP thinks and is projecting this as a Modi wave, AAP suddenly feels that it can take on anyone anywhere even when they haven’t won majority seats in Delhi.  Congress on the other hand suffered because it refused to look at the changing trends in the country.

The idea that people are disconnected from the decision making and needs to be provided for or to be told 'what is right' is an archaic way of governing. Most of the western democracies have faced this before and maybe it would give us an indication for the future. However, who takes it and implements it would define the future for them and us as citizens of this country.

Ronald Regan in the US and Margret Thatcher in the UK came to power with the direct connect with the people. They rode on the premise that large governments are bad. ‘Government is part of the problem not of the solution.’ They were very successful, however, at the end of these periods first in the US and then in the UK a phenomenon occurred which transformed the basic structure of how you fight an election and how you define your policies and manifestos. It was first Bill Clinton and then later Tony Blair who executed this strategy to win these elections.    

Congress at this moment finds itself being squeezed from both sides as its voter base is being high jacked from both ends. Narendra Modi backed by large corporations on the ‘Right’ side of politics and on the other side a lot of regional parties and I am including AAP in it too as their political presence is still only in Delhi. If you are economically liberal but socially conservative, the BJP and Narendra Modi seem like a good choice.  But Mr. Modi is making, ‘Denial of Compassion’ a respectable thing. He is telling the majority that it is OK for them to be cruel towards others both on a social-religious level and also at the economic level. For people who are socially liberal but economically conservative can choose between Congress and a few smaller parties. Congress in principle would remain economically left leaning, though, apart from a few mass schemes their larger economic ideology is not very different from BJP. Now I really haven’t seen a proper political philosophy from AAP yet and I am not sure where they stand. The idea that governments basic job is to look after marginalised parts of the society and to make larger political sense of the views in this article I am putting Congress in the category of a Left leaning party on both social and economical basis rather than a centrist one.

People like me face a problem now; we want a socially aware and liberal government which has an open mind towards economic freedom. Because this is the only way we would be able to keep the social fabric of anti-communalism and will also be able take a large poor population of this country and give them a life which they aspire. I mean the life they aspire and not what politicians look to aspire for us.

The interesting thing is that most Indians want clean and efficient governance as the US voters in 1980 wanted before Ronald Regan was elected and in the UK before the 1979, Margret Thatcher elections. AAP and BJP’s whole campaign is centred on this.

But what makes it more complex is the use of internet and social media is penetrating deep and this power lies with the a large chunk of new voters. They like the mid 90s in the US and UK want participation in the decision making and an expression of self more than any other thing. They want to be heard of their aspirations and need someone to formulate strategies on these individuals and not on top-down approach of policy making which treats large pockets of the populations as social groups which could be catered in large numbers.

A few days ago my grand mom had passed away and this tragic event gave me a chance to travel to right in the centre in India. Travelling in deep Madhya Pradesh between Seoni and Chhindwara is an 80 km journey with one major stop centred right in between but it is also littered with many small villages where the bus driver only stops to pick or drop someone. We must have travelled around 20 kms when the bus stopped and I saw two girls came running from a nearby village which might have been around 150 mts from the road. We waited for these girls to board the bus. They got in and paid Rs.20 as a one way fare. The same happened with another three of them in the next village and another few at the next. Most of these were girls, neatly dressed, most of them with book bags and mobile phones. Some of them even had smart phones. As one of these girls was sitting next to me I asked where they were going and the response was, “We are going to Chaurai (a small town or a large village, whatever you want to call it centred in between Seoni and Chhindwara) to attend the coaching classes for Pre Engineering College Exams. This elated me, this dedication in girls for higher studies, they walk some distance to come to the road, then take a bus by paying Rs. 40 each day for a round trip, just to get a little coaching to appear in an exam in probably one of the deepest parts of India. My first reaction was, now this could make us the best nation in the world in coming years but as I evaluated it turns out that on the other hand if we do not fulfil their aspirations in the coming future we could have a disaster of disgruntled 400 million who would be under 30. This demographic advantage could just work against us.      

This story points out what most parties are missing and especially Congress. Winning of the election using top-down large mass scale schemes like Food security bill or NREGA for rural employment might not be enough. No, I am not saying that they are not important, au contraire, I think they are important but what they miss is the individual touch. We need to look at all the demographics and then evaluate and measure, the desires and values of individuals. Look what each individual feels inside, what motivates them or what is important for them in the future.

The reduction of congress in scale would be largely detrimental to India as a Federal union of states because we do want a strong and stable central government which doesn’t always have to rely on multi party coalitions. Congress and to a certain extent BJP are the only contenders. But there seems to be a chasm between the Congress Party and the common man desires. Somehow there seems that the man on the street thinks of Congress as elitist even when they try to implement most of large scale mass benefiting policies.  

However, there lies an advantage that Congress has over a lot of other parties. The socially aware people and most intellectuals will still make a choice which is socially liberal and economically beneficial to large sections of society and this is a stand on which Congress party stands. It needs a way to attract not only these people into its fold rather than losing them to AAP but also it needs to engage the next generation so that they can be motivated by this political philosophy.  But this to materialize sycophancy needs to go, this perception that the Congress Party is centred around a family has been detrimental to its larger cause.

Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher were the first exponents of using individualism in politics. They thought that an individual should be the focus and not the usual demographic divides. In both these cases it was the business which actually fulfilled the desires of the individuals. Republicans ruled the US for next 12 years and in the UK dominated the politics for next 18.

But, it was socialist and left leaning Bill Clinton who truly used the idea of participation an individual in creating a campaign to the fullest. He came from Democratic Party which was left leaning and believed in government for the masses but he knew the new masses were everywhere and at every level of society.    

He promised tax breaks to the middle class fully knowing that by doing that his welfare programs would get hurt. But he was determined to come to power and yet fulfil the large Democratic policies of helping the poor and marginalised first. However, a rude shock came to him in the congressional election of 1994. He lost badly in both the houses because he had chosen to not look at the individual desires that he had come to power with. The voters felt betrayed and wanted revenge. This is the exact same situation that the Congress Party faces today as most people voted anti-Congress mandate.

Clinton tweaked his policy formulation again for his re-election. He used focus groups in the same way as psychoanalysts use to extract the inner desires and feelings of individuals. People were divided by inner psychological needs into different segments. This information was then evaluated to formulate his policies. The policies looked odd when viewed through the lens of old politics. They looked short term and very basic and small initiatives, but the Clinton team knew that this was the new way.  This way Clinton was the first to design his policies for the future based on direct feedback he had received from the voters.  Then in 1997, Tony Blair was able to oust Conservatives using exactly the same way to win his election.

People today in India desire more not only in what they buy but also from their government. They want to be treated as individuals who should be taken seriously.  But a caution that needs to be pointed out, though in some sense a lot of people are aspiring and connected to the mainstream but our physical infrastructure roads, ports, electricity seems to be stuck a long way behind. That is why some kind of Roosevelt’s welfare model needs to be merged with the Clintonian model.

What Congress (or any other party) needs to do is to create a massive engagement with the large sections of the voting population. Figure out the inner desires and values of people, what they feel inside about their lives? What motivates them? What is important to them? What policies would help them? What social structure would give them a sense of satisfaction? What do they aspire and what are the hindrances in achieving those desires? This needs to be measured and analysed. Instead of picking the regular divisions of society, age, caste, religion, language or class this data could divide these individuals on the inherent traits.

So the concluding message would be. Do not denigrate the aspiration of real India. Treat voters as participants or owners in the process rather than the targets or beneficiaries, don’t try to manipulate them, just learn from them.

It might seem hard at the beginning with a diverse country of ours. We endure & celebrate the diversity of the utmost kind but we might be surprised to find that the underlying feelings & wishes amongst most sections of our society might be very similar. These similarities and dissimilarities at the people level need to be evaluated. Once you are able to establish the desires and the motivations I am sure that we would have not only a better government but also more aware and better citizens. This inturn would create a better democracy which would be based on true desires and feelings of each and every individual.