Human values: Do we have anything left?

Today its Saturday and I was casually browsing the web, before I stumbled on the headline Honeymoon murder: Bride guides groom’s ‘killers’ route via SMS in Indian Express.

The story is about a newly-wed girl killing her own husband of 8 days in their honeymoon to elope with her lover. The girl comes from an upper-middle class family in probably grew up in conservative environment and with these I presume that she is educated at least till college level. The girl falls in love with a Christian auto driver and the parents hurriedly marry her off to some distant relative, who in all possibility could have been kept in dark about her affair. The girl agrees for the marriage, as she is concerned for her mother's health, but, she and her lover decide to kill the husband after the marriage, that too in their honeymoon. The couple are followed by the killers (a friend of the driver comes to help in killing) and the girl communicates their movement to them by SMS. And, finally they kill the innocent husband and the bride now plays a drama of unidentified persons killling her husband and robbing her valuables. The police solves the case, thanks to an alert auto driver hired by the killers.

These to me are plain and simple mortals, whom we meet day in and day out. A girl falling in love with someone outside the caste or religion is not bad at all. But, what disturbs me is that it has gone to the extent of cold-blooded murder of an innocent person, without any thoughts of guilt feeling by three people - the girl, her lover and his friend. Remember, the murder was not committed out of anger in a flash second, but with complete planning and coordination. The attack-by-unidentified-persons drama by the girl proves their level of planning to cleverly escape from the police.

To be fair, the girl's parents are also to be blamed partly for their age-old beliefs on other-caste/religion no-no mentality. Curiously enough, the girl was concerned about her mother's health, when she agreed to the marriage. but, didn't thought second time before conspiring to kill her husband.

You might remember about the gruesome killing of 13 people (including 4 children and 4 women) for some old family enmity in a village in Andhra Pradesh. But, then I was telling myself that, its the lack of education and development that pushed these people to the vicious cycle of revenge. But, in this case, the upper-middle class girl has been educated and is supposed to have the ability of independent thinking, some sense and respect for human values.

We all believe that, education and economic well-being will make the country and society to progress. But, now I am not sure as I see that the values are eroding visibly.

Where are we heading?

Nehru-Gandhi & Sons Pvt. Ltd aka Congress (I)

Well, its about dynastic politics of Congress and you may argue that, "Whats the matter, almost every party in India has its share of sons and daughters, so why single out Congress alone?". But, wait a minute, it might be true to a large extent, but still there are differences in Congress.

Take any Indian party, which has more than one member from the same genetic backgroud - NC & PDP in J&K, Shiv Sena in Maha, JD(S) in Karnataka, DMK, PMK in TN, BJD in Orissa, the list probably could never be exhaustive. In all these cases, you will find that, the individuals will always be referred by their party past or by their role in the government, as the case may be. For example, in TN, Stalin refers to Karunanidhi as either chief minister or party president or leader and NOT as my father. Look at the NC, Omar Abdullah is not the son of Farooq in the party forum, but a leader of the party and ditto with the Mufti family of PDP. The same is the case of Shiv sena or JD(S) or any other political family.

But, the mother of all dynasties - the Nehru-Gandhi lineage is different from that all. During and after the Rae Bareli by-election, we were given minute details of brother Rahul working really hard for ensuring huge victory margin for mother Sonia. Not to forget that daughter Priyanka worked as the election agent for her mother assisting the brother. If you don't remember these, just look at these reports in IBNLive, ET, IPS and its all about the tale of a family and not of the party. Not even a single time, I have heard Sonia being referred as party president either by Rahul or Priyanka. For the family, the contributions of other leaders in Rae Bareli (or to the party) or Rahul's own contribution outside Rae Bareli are insignificant.

This is the classic case of manufacturing a leader out of Rahul, even though there might be better qualified or deserving youngsters in the party. Consider this, Rahul never stepped out of Rae Bareli - a family fiefdom, when elections were also on in 5 states having about 116 parliamentary seats and about 800+ assembly seats between them. Rahul was never sent to campaign in any of these states, despite the fact that party was in trouble in Kerala, TN and WB - the three crucial states. He was not utilised for campaigning for other Congress candidates or to boost the morale of the cadre in these states, even when the mother was busy touring these states.

Well, lets now consider just the case of Rae Bareli and see how big the victory is. The 2004 elections saw about 48% voter turnout and this time, it was pegged at 43.34%, down by about 5% and all this after the hardwork of the son, whose sole aim was to encourage the women folk to come out and vote in large numbers. With close to 57% of the people staying away the polling booth either due to Sonia's assured victory or due to disenchantment, why such a fuss about the huge victory margin? And, if you don't know something, here is a trivia - none of the five assembly segments coming under Rae Bareli is represented by Congress, so much so for the influence of the family and party.

Comparing Rahul with other sons is becoming inevitable for me. Most of the sons or daughters of the political heavyweights, at one time or the other, have proved their abilities or leadership qualities (probably the only negative aspect would be, they are being projected overlooking the other able and deserving leaders in respective parties). They had invariably spent years in party and worked at various leves, interacted with grassroot workers and public, have lead agitations and other political movements and participated in assemply/parliamentary debates.

This is true with most of the heirs in Congress too, whether it is Sachin Pilot or Milind Deora, but Rahul is not only different but gifted too (so is Anbumani Ramdoss of PMK, who suddenly emerged from nowhere to become a cabinet minister) in that despite not being participated in parlimentary proceedings except for twice (in two years) his voice was never heard on any of the burning national issues. And whenever, he did spoke, it was like neither here nor there, displaying either utter lack of knowledge on the issue or reluctance to speak up his thoughts, if at all he had anything. To prove this, I needn't go much farther than the reservation issue: when asked for his opinion on the raging reservation debate, gem of words emerged from his mouth, "both sides have valid points". Amazing clarity, isn't it?

If you think about that, the logic is simple. Use Rahul in Rae Bareli and then project the assured victory to the charisma and hard-work!?!? of Rahul, the dedicated son or brother, as you want to look at it. This is what I call as manufacturing a leader out of a person having a specific six-letter surname and born in the family.

If the EC doesn't have any objections, the sycophants can get the name of the party changed to the one I've suggested in the title above, which will suit it more.

Pramod Mahajan - A Hope cut short

It is hard to believe that Promod Mahajan is no more for a month plus now. The people, cutting across various spectra from politics to business to Bollywood to the public, who visited him in the hospital and his funeral clearly demonstrated his popularity and charisma. For a simple school teacher without any political connection in Maharashtra, his rise in BJP and then in national politics is astounding and legendary, especially in India, where political power is transferred through the sacred bloodline rather through leadership or other hard-earned qualities; from Tamil Nadu till Kashmir or from Maharashtra till Assam- literally.

This was achieved by his shrewdness in political management, in cultivating grassroot support and in easily building bridges with people, be it Ambanis or Bachchans (though its ironical that, he failed to have a good relationship with his own brother). Arguably, he was the best bet for BJP, plagued by internal strife among its second generation leaders. Who else one could think of as a future Prime Minister, if not Mahajan? He was one of a rare breed of leaders, who are characterised by dynamism, charisma, organisational skills and vision for the party and the country.

He brought a new style of politics to the traditionally controlled BJP, which was till then controlled by RSS. While RSS was probably sulking with his lavish lifestyle and gennext thoughts, chances are that, he was either busy talking with industrialists for party funds or strategising for some campaign or acting a troubleshooter for the party or defending the party in televised media shows. How many of us would have forgotten his traditional smirk and wondered about his cool even when he was pushing politicians from other parties to take cover in a debate in some satellite channel? If, you think about it, there are only two leaders, who had effectively used media in/ for their political career - Chandrababu Naidu and Pramod Mahajan.

In a sense, when he pitched for a BJP-Shiv sena alliance in Maharashtra way back in 1989, he probably foresaw the power of a simple mantra called coalation, which has now become the shortcut to political power in the country, where a new party is launched every month. Though, he might not had a popular votebase as that of Vajpayee or Uma Bharti or Narendra Modi, his organizational skills and innovative ideas compensated for more than his shortcomings.

The rise of BJP to the political peak, undeniably has the contribution of Mahajan, if not its fall in 2004. Many say that it is his India shining campaign as the reason for BJP's defeat, but I don't accept that quite (see Tail piece). Promod's untimely death is probably the worst thing (at least till now) to happen for BJP, which is being chased by bad luck after its shocking defeat in 2005. It will now be an impossible task for the party to find a successor, after all Chanakyas are not born always.

A great hope for the country was indeed cut short in the middle, in a tragic way. As many have already said/ wrote, it is unfortunate that India lost its future Prime minister. I guess, this is the biggest tribute to the man called Pramod Mahajan.

RIP Mr. Pramod Mahajan!


Tail piece: One important reason for 2004 defeat, is the strong coalation build by Congress, which clearly learnt the lesson from BJP's earlier victory. The unrest in left parties struggling to retain their identity in a fast growing economy as reflected in the growth of the Indian middle class and the political compulsions of regional parties as in the cases of AIADMK vs. DMK in TN, RJD vs. JD in Bihar, BSP vs. SP in UP; Congress became the natural choice for them all. They all knew well that Congress can never become dominant in their own turfs as is established in almost every state election held after 2004.