Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Chhattisgarh 2008 (4): Thoughts on the Eve of the Verdict

In less than a week, all will be revealed: to paraphrase the Great Dickens, we would know for certain whether we are headed straight for heaven or going direct the other way. By most estimates- and here, I am not talking of ‘surveys’ published by various media houses (these, I shall deal with separately)- it is a tough call; even more to the point, we’re told that Independents, the BSP & the CPI would, in all probability, play a decisive role in the formation of Chhattisgarh’s third government. Not surprisingly, both major parties- the ruling BJP as well as the Congress- are already wooing them in earnest.

Even now- more than ten days after the second round of polling ended- it is difficult to decipher the precise vectors that led more than 70% of the state’s electorate to cast its votes- a significantly higher figure than in any of the other five election-going states (Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir). Could this extraordinary polling percentage be only due to (a) an increase in the number of polling booths in every constituency, which made it easier for people to go and vote & (b) heightened awareness among voters thanks to an intensive media campaign, as many have surmised; or- and this is the really uncertain variable with the potential of upsetting all existing political calculations- were there other Issues- perhaps even an overriding Issue to beat all other issues- at play in the electorate’s mind? If so, what might they- it- be?

The two dominant versions currently on offer reflect, more than anything else, wishful thinking on the part of both major political parties: the BJP would have us believe that people went to the booths singing “Chaaur Waale Baba ki Jai” (Long Live the Rice-waale Baba) in an obvious reference to what they perceive to be the immense popularity of Dr. Raman Singh’s Rs. 3 per kilo rice scheme launched six months before the elections. The Congress on the other hand seems to draw comfort from the basic tenet of classical psephology: that a high voter turnout is indicative of a strong anti-incumbency undercurrent.

The BJP’s claim can be disputed for a variety of reasons. One, “chaaur waale baba”- a title the BJP claims the people of the state have lovingly bestowed on Dr. Raman Singh- isn’t really something any Chhattisgarhiya would say for the simple reason that “waale” is as alien to the Chhattisgarhi dialect as Dr. Singh’s Uttar Pradeshi- Pratapgarhiya- roots. Two, as I have already discussed in an earlier post, this scheme isn’t as big a success as it has been made out to be.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Saturday, November 29, 2008

ICH BIN EIN MUMBAIKAR

For three nights and two days now, a city- and a nation- have been held hostage: the precise identity and motive of the perpetrators remains uncertain; their methodology, however, is (regrettably) no longer in doubt: for the umpteenth time, hundreds of unarmed civilians- business travelers, restaurant goers, innocent bystanders, hotel guests & staff- have fallen victim to a meticulously-planned & carefully-coordinated cross-border terrorist attack in the heart of India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Most significantly, it has exposed the weak underbelly- the absolute vulnerability- of our nation’s security apparatus.

A Different Class of Attacks
The Attack on Mumbai is being televised nonstop. As a blogger, I shall attempt here to put what we are seeing in perspective. 



First: the Victims of the Attacks. This isn’t for the first time that the world's Maximum City has come under fire: at least two bomb blasts- one at the Stock Exchange and another on Mumbai’s local trains- have resulted in an equal, if not more, number of deaths. What makes this particular set of attacks different- apart of course from its inherent Drama (to which I shall come to later)- are its Victims, or more precisely, the class of its Victims. Those killed earlier were, to put it blatantly, commoners in an extraordinary situation: the sort of people who live in faraway suburbs and commute in second-class local trains; not exactly the sort who would put up in USD 250 a night suite, or spend an average monthly wage on fine dining at Tiffin, a trendy new restaurant at The Oberoi that was witness to a veritable bloodbath on the night of the attacks.

In this case, the victims are not-quite-common people caught up in what is alarmingly becoming an only too common situation. A lot of the people who were taken hostage & killed during the past forty-eight hours belonged to the so-called Class of Untouchables: those who we- and by we, I mean our Collective Imagination- thought were above, among other things, being attacked by terrorists; the glass-housed Glitterati, so to speak. Now: the glass is broken & we realize- much to our discomfort- that even these hallowed creatures aren’t safe & truth be told, this terrifies us more than any of the previous attacks.

Secondly: the Media’s Role in taking the high-voltage Drama- rapid rounds of crossfire between policemen and terrorists ensconced in sushi-bars, masked commandos descending on rooftops from helicopters, guests waving for help from behind glass windows of their twenty-first floor suites, grenade launchers & AK-47s, bodies of brave warriors wrapped in tricolors, relieved evacuees- into every Indian household with a television set, has, for better & worse, made every Indian- both in India & abroad- a direct participant in the unfolding tragedy. Suddenly, every other news, including the death of a former prime minister, is no longer news. Suddenly, we’re all- you & I- Victims under siege, whether we’re in Mumbai or not. Our feeling of helplessness is- has become- universal: no one is- can be- safe. On the positive side, this creates in us- a largely divided nation- a sense of ‘Unity in Fear’: suddenly, each one of us is saying “Ich Bin Ein Mumbaikar.”

Thirdly: on the flip side, this pervasive sense of Paranoia creates in all of us, an overwhelming need to blame someone, anyone. And the easiest scapegoat: Politicians, of course. It is no secret that the Union Home Minister- and by implication, the Government of India- already suffers from something of a credibility crisis: he was widely ridiculed for reportedly having changed his dress thrice within an hour’s span of Delhi being bombed some months ago; his defense, that this ‘serial-dressing’ wasn’t exactly a vice, did little to assuage a slightly misplaced comparison with a certain Nero, who allegedly played the flute while Rome burned. Apparently, this metaphor has been extended to incorporate all politicians as a species. “Keep Out”, “Get Lost”: these are the overwhelming messages to them. It is they who’ve in the public imagination failed to protect us as a nation. Even worse, we feel they would only be too eager to use this Tragedy for political capital. A case in point is the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi’s sudden- and thoroughly unproductive- appearance before The Oberoi this afternoon.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Chhattisgarh 2008 (3): Murder of Democracy by State Home Minister

A most disturbing incident has occurred in Ramanujganj-7 (ST) constituency, which has shaken the very foundations of democracy in Chhattisgarh: Shri Ram Vichar Netam, state home minister & BJP candidate from that constituency, is even now, at the time of writing of this post (1830 hrs), personally present inside polling booths number 22 & 23 (Pachawal), where he has been actively rigging the EVMs in his favor for the past two hours. The Congress candidate, Shri Brihaspat Singh (telephone number: 9407618630, 9406221282), who is also present on the spot, was physically beaten up by the hon’ble home minister & his armed security officers, and thrown out of the booth. He is present at Pachawal now, and can furnish an eye witness account of what is happening there.

All this has been communicated to the Collector & RO, Ambikapur, and the SP, Balrampur, at least one hour ago, but no action has been taken. Shri Badrinarayan Meena, the SP, is a known supporter of the hon’ble home minister, and was personally posted by the latter in his home district some months ago for exactly such an occasion.

On the contrary, Shri Alok Shukla, the chief electoral officer of the state, has denied this incident altogether in a televised press conference at the exact same time when the hon’ble minister is personally rigging the EVMs. All this shows the complicity of the state administration in aiding the ruling party to subvert democracy in Chhattisgarh.

I hope that justice will prevail, and the voices of the villagers of Pachawal will not be allowed to be stifled by the very person entrusted by our Constitution to protect them: at every cost, repolls must take place in the aforementioned polling booths.

AJ

Post Script:
Brihaspati Singh lost by 4000 votes. He trailed by more than 2200 from Pachawal. Despite numerous complaints, no repoll was ordered.

Ram Vichar Netam has been divested of the Home portfolio although he continues to be a minister in the current government.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Comment: Amarnath- Part II

What's in an And?
As an ardent admirer of Jared Diamond’s ongoing treatise (expounded in a series of best-selling books beginning with ‘Guns, Germs, Steel’), I have come to believe that Geography, more than any other factor, is indeed the fundamental vector in shaping the course of Human History: when we speak of the state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), the epicenter of the Amarnath Controversy, the operative words are neither ‘J’ nor ‘K’; it is, infact, the quintessential ‘&’. This ‘&’ seeks to drive an irreconcilable wedge between the two; and Minority Appeasement, that cunning little creature about which we discussed in the last post, is, as it turns out, the double-edged sword that has brought this about.

For as long as one can remember, these two regions, connected only by an umbilical cord of the Jammu-Srinagar national highway painstakingly tunneled through mountains, have functioned as disparate geopolitical entities: a Hindu-dominated J on the plains, and a Muslim-dominated K in the Valley. Ergo, when the J&K government handed over 100 acres of forest land to the Shrine Board, the Muslim-majority in Kashmir saw it as appeasement of the Hindu-majority in Jammu, possibly with an eye towards an impending Assembly election; when they took it back, the rest of the country saw it as an effort to once again appease the already over-appeased Kashmiri Muslims. Despite this somewhat hasty governmental-afterthought- to take back the allotted land thereby removing the immediate cause of Kashmiri discontent- the Valley continues to boil: in the words of a separatist pro-Pakistan Hurriyat leader, Syed Gilani, the land itself has become a ‘non-issue’. If so, what then is the issue? Clearly, this somewhat simplistic communal distinction isn’t adequate to explain what’s happening in- and to- J&K.

For the first time, the (Indian) state seems to be at a total & utter loss: sure, it was a mistake to give land to the Shrine Board in the first place, now we can all see that; but wasn’t that decision revoked, and the mistake rectified? Why, then, aren’t things settling down? Why, for instance, are millions of Kashmiris suddenly marching all over Srinagar hurling green-colored Pakistani flags, wishing each other ‘belated Happy Independence day’ on 15th August? Why have they all set their watches thirty minutes behind? Don’t they- can’t they- see that that these Pakis have done nothing for Kashmiris except to smuggle them guns & bombs to blow each other to smithereens? Surely, they ought to understand that we, the Indians, are their true friends, their only well-wishers.

And that is the exact point of this whole Controversy: the Kashmiris do not see us, the Indians, as their friends; on the contrary, we’re perceived as the Enemy; even more worryingly, Pakistan is viewed as the Good Guy. Suddenly, this business of Minority Appeasement isn’t confined to India alone; it has quite simply gone transnational.

Sheesh Mahal
To understand why- despite the state government’s best efforts to assuage the Kashmiri sentiment in the Amarnath land-allocation controversy; despite the imposition of Article 370 that guarantees Kashmir’s special status; despite the tens of billions of rupees spend by the GOI to develop the Valley- we Indians have become villains in the eyes of countless ordinary Kashmiris, and not just extremist-jihadis, it is important to look at what followed the government’s decision to take back the land: a nationwide Bandh was called by the BJP to gain political capital from that decision, citing it as yet another example of Congress’ efforts at Minority Appeasement; thousands of saffron flag-hurling Hindu hardliners, led by the VHP-RSS combine under the banner of a swiftly-assembled ‘Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti’, took to the streets in Jammu; and most dangerously, the Jammu-Srinagar highway- that most delicate umbilical cord- was blockaded, effectively cutting-off the Valley from rest of the country. In the midst of all this anti-Kashmiri sentiment across the nation, 500,000 Hindus quietly completed their annual Amarnath pilgrimage, unmolested & unharmed.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Comment: Amarnath- Part I

At the face of it, the decision to handover land to the Amarnath Shrine Board, a religious trust entrusted with the organization of a hugely popular annual Hindu pilgrimage involving millions of participants from all over India, only to take it back a few days later, isn’t exactly good politics; to be absolutely honest, it reminds me of another decision, taken in the mid-1980s, to reopen the gates of the Babri Masjid complex at Ayodhya. And we all know, where that landed us. The point, which many politicians tend to forget, is to let sleeping dogs lie.

Going Down Secularism’s Rabbit Hole
It’s all very well to say that India is “secular” but strictly speaking, that isn’t- can’t be- true. We’re secular, but in our own peculiar sort of way: to us, being secular doesn’t mean being irreligious (as it does in Turkey and in much of the West); here, it simply means ‘sarvadharma sambhav’ or equal goodwill to all religions- not only by the state in the formulation & execution of its policies but also by citizens in their attitude towards fellow-citizens. Implicit in this interpretation is the acceptance that religions are indeed inseparable from- and intrinsic to- public life. Put differently, they- i.e., the state and religion- cannot be put into two neat, totally unrelated, compartments. The recognition of this fact should then be the starting point of all debate on religious issues; otherwise we mistakenly risk being labeled ‘communal’ or worse, ‘pseudo-secular’.

But that’s not quite it. The movement from being secular to secularism entails two further Duties both on the state and on citizens that go beyond simple, passive-goodwill; in effect, these Duties actualize- and make manifest- the dictum of sarvadharma sambhav, and in so doing, explicitly obligate the state to participate in matters otherwise purely pertaining to religious faith.

To understand the basis of the first such Duty, it is important to appreciate that not all religions are equally represented; indeed, Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India. In order to ensure that the majority-will doesn’t encroach upon the distinctive identities of religious-minorities, the Constitution provides for certain safeguards: if the religious-identity of a minority-community comes under threat, then it becomes the duty of the state to necessarily & actively participate in what is technically speaking, a purely religious matter. A Delhi High Court judgment last week permitting St. Stephen’s College, a ‘minority educational establishment’ I went to, to appoint its own Principal & set its own rules with respect to its admission policy without interference from the Delhi University, is a case in point.

The second Duty that Indian-secularism enjoins upon the state is to create conditions wherein persons of all religious-faiths, including those belonging to religious minorities, can freely practice, preach and propagate their religion. In this respect, while the state isn’t expected to directly participate in a religious matter, it must do so to the extent that citizens are allowed to practice, preach & propagate their respective faiths freely: if, for instance, a person is being physically prevented from going to his place of worship, it becomes the duty of the state to remove all such barriers; likewise, if a person is converted by force of threat, then the state has to ensure that such force is removed.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Sunday, July 20, 2008

COMMENT: The UPA's Vote of Confidence Or India's Quest for Self-Respect

To LISTEN to this entry on my Podcast, click here.

Tomorrow’s Vote is not about the survival of the UPA; it is about India’s self-respect. Never before has Parliament convened to discuss a more important issue- one whose consequences would not only decide the fate of a government but also determine the place India will take in the 21st century.

During the last general elections, the people of India voted out the NDA because they felt that it was doing very little for the poor. The UPA, therefore, is- if nothing else- a government of the poor, for the poor and by the poor. In my opinion, Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government has been driven by only one consideration (inspired by the Mahatma’s talisman about the daridra narayan): how do we restore the self-respect of India’s poor, especially the farmers whose blood, toil and sweat feed us? The NREGA ensures that the sons & daughters of farmers no longer have to go begging for jobs in faraway city slums; now, hundreds of millions living in the villages can claim employment as a birth right. Not only do they live with self-respect, thanks to the NREGA, but in doing so, they are creating billions of rupees worth of rural infrastructure. Also, under the UPA, Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for foodgrains have more than tripled; farmers’ loans have been waived across the board. Never before in the history of India have the farmers got higher prices for their crops than now. The same goes for tribals. By enacting the Tribal Act, they have once again been made masters of their own homes.

Rajiv ji had forewarned at the historic Bombay AICC Session (1985) that of every rupee sent by GOI, only a fraction reaches its intended beneficiary. To ensure, therefore, that the benefits of the aforementioned schemes reach their rightful beneficiaries, the UPA has enacted the RTI. No other step has done more to weed out the cancer of corruption that is eating into the fabric of our society. RTI has not merely attacked the symptom of that disease, but its cause (lack of transparency). Henceforth, every citizen has a right to know what his government is up to, and to hold it to the test of accountability.

The above-mentioned steps- both historic and momentous- have gone a long way in restoring the self-confidence of those who had been left out from India’s march towards development for too long. The Civil Nuclear Energy Agreement too should, then, be seen in light of UPA’s overriding commitment to India’s self-respect. Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Sunday, July 06, 2008

On Golden Pond: Kumarakom, Kerala



Snapshots from our first family holiday of this millennium!

To read more comments, visit here & here.

AJ


Monday, June 23, 2008

Saibel on my Takhatpur Visit

Note: Dr. Saibel Farishta recently accompanied me to the final match of the district-level floodlight cricket tournament held at Takhatpur, a quaint little township some twenty kilometers from Bilaspur. He has put his observations on his blog, which I am reproducing here:

On 15th June 2008 - I had accompanied Mr Amit Jogi and Mr Shailesh Nitin Trivedi on a political visit to Takhatpur in Bilaspur district, where Mr Amit Jogi was invited as the Chief Guest in the closing ceremony of an annual Cricket Tounament Function. I was stunned to see the mind-blowing enthusiasm among the young Congress party supporters of Takhatpur. The customary felicitation ceremony was held on a cricket ground in the central part of the town, as the local Govt. authorities had refused the organizers another School Ground, where Dr Raman Singh was supposed to deliver speech during his 'Vikas/Vinash Yatra'.

On several occasions, Mr Amit Jogi's entourage was cheered and welcomed by a huge number of young Congress workers. A lot of people from the minority communities, esp. Muslims & Sikhs, were also seen welcoming Mr Amit Jogi.

Mr Amit Jogi, Mr Dharamjeet Singh and others briefly spoke to the audience. Amitji emphasized on the power of youth in today's politics and how Mr Rahul Gandhi was spearheading a campaign, to join & re-unite the country's youth in Congress Party. Amitji also disclosed that another budding & upcoming youth organisation - 'Aam Aadmi Ke Sipahi' had been formed by Rahul Gandhi, to connect with the common man's problems.

The Congress supporters thronged Mr Amit Jogi's car from all directions and the vehicle's doors were dented from outside.

There was an amazing atmosphere of 'Genuine Respect & Good will' for the Jogi family, as a whole. In between all of this - loud noise of a musical band, chanting of slogans, bursting of crackers, garlands and Congress flags - I was moved, when my eyes fell on some rurals, who just stood at a distance, far from the maddening crowd, with their hands joined, welcoming & staring at Mr Amit Jogi. Their eyes glittered with a ray of Hope for them & The Poor Man's Party - Congress.

I immediately sensed the Mood Of Chhattisgarh - CONGRESS will WIN in Chhattisgarh.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Post Script: Why Criticism has become Necessary?

I had taken the liberty of simultaneously putting the last post on cg-net, a Yahoo-based group that focuses on Chhattisgarh. In response to that posting, a member, Ajai Kumar Singh, posed the following question (in a separate thread):

"A question to all? Are we use this group to campaigning party politics. One should put the solutions or Ideas, not only criticising each other."

As it turns out, Mr. Singh's query has evoked a rather fascinating discussion- with a flurry of (I am happy to note, mostly) for & against responses. For instance, I am in total agreement with what Mr. OP Goel said:

"We must allow everyone to express themselves in whatever manner they want[other than being nasty and personal]. A tolerant society is the hallmark of a vibrant democracy.

We started with the objective of development of CG. Can we take a step forward to this goal? As they say in China, a journey of 1000 miles has to begin with the first step."


Ms. Rajshree Jyoti was even more precise: "Dear Friends," she wrote,

"I don't see any objection in this. We all know Amit Jogi is a son of Ajit Jogi ji and his political association. This is good for us to know his thought about policies and what they think in this regard. One more thing I want to share that earlier I have a negative image in my mind about Amit but after reading his thoughts on various issues I have changed my mind about him and this (has) happen(ed) through cg net. What's wrong in it?"

What do I think about all this? Well, apart from the fact that this Blog- and cg net- give me a space for voicing my side of the story that the mainstream does- and can- not, it may be little more than a coincidence but the first actual responses to the Vikas Yatra came shortly after the publication of that post. A group of tribals in Korba reminded Dr. Raman Singh of his long-forgotten ‘sankalp’ to give them jersey cows; they did so by waving Gervas, or jute-ropes that they might otherwise have used to harness Dr. Singh’s non-existent cows, and copies of the BJP’s Sankalp Patr as he rode past in his 'Vikas Rath'. In response, they were mercilessly lathi-charged.

In Pusaur, the rural hinterland of Raigarh city that I toured yesterday, over 5000 tribals are threatening to tie the HCM in one and take him home instead of the absentee-cows they haven't got even if they can’t really milk him (!). They also pointed out that neither Dr. Singh nor his supposedly 'Hindu' party have the slightest respect for the precepts of that religion: first, they defiled the name of Lord Ram by reneging on a sacred vow taken in his name (kasam ram ki khaate hain, mandir wahin banayenge); and now, they have done the same to the holy-of-holies, the Gau Mata (Mother Cow).

On the 14th of this month, a massive rally of mostly unemployed youth in Bilaspur chipped in Rs. 500 in coins and small change to remind Dr. Singh of his promise to give them that amount as monthly stipend. Many of them have since begun to be threatened with dire consequences by a local minister.

In Raigarh, a mock Chhal Rath (Betrayal Chariot) Yatra was taken out- in which a Dr. Raman Singh lookalike spoke about the promises he cunningly made to dupe the simple people of Chhattisgarh, and other issues of corruption and total breakdown of law & order.

A lot of this has already been covered by the local media, and people everywhere are finally begin to ask a question not many cared to ask before: can we trust this man- and his party?

It seems to me that once you begin to criticize (which to me is no different an act from speaking the truth), then people are quite capable of coming up with their own suggestions- and even more significantly, reactions. The two acts- criticizing and suggesting- aren’t all that different.

Perhaps, this is what Hegel- and Marx after him- had in mind when they coined the triple-phrase ‘thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis’. And more often than not, synthesis is coda for action.

AJ

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Chhattisgarh 2008 (2): A Kingdom of Lies

There is an old adage that goes something like this: you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but not all of the people all of the time. This adage, however, doesn’t seem to apply to Dr. Raman Singh, the chief minister of Chhattisgarh.

The clearest example of this is his much-publicized, government-sponsored Vikas Yatra: frankly, it is beyond me how he can go to the people, riding gallantly atop a customized state-of-the-art air-conditioned Rath, when he has betrayed them by not fulfilling one word of his party’s Sankalp Patr? Either he is totally and absolutely shameless or worse, he thinks that Chhattisgarhiyas, by nature, are fools. Anybody in his shoes should have hid his face in shame. Instead, he has decided to spend tens of crores of the state’s- and the people’s- money in telling Lies a hundred times in the hope that they would somehow become the truth.

This is perhaps for the first time that the state machinery- and funds- have been so brazenly used for what is a purely political campaign. To me, this is not only evidence of Dr. Singh's excessive reliance on the bureaucracy- his partner-in-crime, so to speak- to see his party reelected; but more significantly, it shows the BJP’s inability to undertake a full-fledged political campaign on its own. Personally, I doubt if Dr. Singh can draw a crowd in the excess of 1000 on his own, and without active state assistance. What’s more, the enactment of the Vikas Yatra clearly shows that he shares this doubt.

The state’s mainstream media, it seems, too suffer from what can charitably be called collective amnesia: rather than sing paens to the chief minister (Vikas Purush, my foot!), it is their duty to remind those in power of the promises they’d made before coming to power- and happily forgotten since. Did not, for instance, Dr. Singh promise among other things, a jersey cow to every tribal family; Rs. 500 monthly unemployment stipend to every youth; and waiver of farmers’ debts, irrigation tax and electricity bills?

It is these tall promises that brought him to power in the first place. In four years, he has done absolutely nothing to fulfill them. This, in my opinion, constitutes a Historic Betrayal of the People of Chhattisgarh- and especially the tribals, the dalits, the youth and the poor, the ones to whom these promises were specifically made. Unfortunately, these people are, because of their peculiar conditions, unable to give voice to their resentment, their anguish, and under these circumstances, the media and the opposition should have emerged as their spokesperson. In the past four years, neither has managed to do so.

Dr. Singh’s Great- and possibly only- Hope is the success of his Rs. 3 per kilo rice scheme, which he launched in obvious desperation less than a year before elections. (His other Hope, i.e., absence of a united opposition has, especially in light of recent decisions made by the Congress High Command, turned out to be a myth.) If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t be quite as confident.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Rahul Gandhi in Chhattisgarh- I

इस हफ्ते राहुल गाँधी का छत्तीसगढ़ आना लगभग तय है. छत्तीसगढ़ का ये उनका पहला दौरा होगा.

कार्यक्रम की रूपरेखा अब तक फायनल नहीं हुई है. वे कहाँ जायेंगे, किस से मिलेंगे, अभी पूरी तरह से घोषित नहीं हो पाया है. पार्टी के आला नेताओं का राहुल जी के कार्यक्रम को लेकर असमंजस में बने रहना, इसलिए स्वाभाविक है.

मैंने ख़ुद भी ये महसूस किया है कि जितने पहले से कार्यक्रमों की घोषणा कर दी जाती है, वे उतने ही प्रायोजित बन जाते हैं.

मंच पर आसीन लोग आयोजकों का स्वाभाविक रूप से गुणगान करते हैं; अफसरशाही शिकायत करने वाले व्यक्तियों को नेताओं से दूर रखने में कोई कसर नहीं छोड़ती; भीड़ में पहले से ताली बजाने और नारेबाजी करने वालों को बैठा दिया जाता है; प्रतिद्वंदियों को जानबूज कर कार्यक्रम से दूर रखा जाता है. कुछ अतिउत्साही लोग तो इस फिराक में लगे रहते हैं कि अतिथि कार्यक्रम स्थल तक पहुँच ही नहीं पाये.

मानो किसी फिल्मी नाच की तरह, पहले से ही सब कुछ कोरियोग्राफ हो गया हो. अतिथि, मूक दर्शक बनकर, वही देखता है, जो उसे दिखाया जाता है.

राहुल जी की इस बात से ये तो साफ हो गया कि वे मात्र एक दर्शक बनकर छत्तीसगढ़ नहीं आ रहे हैं.

अपने कार्यक्रम को बहुत पहले से घोषित न करके राहुल जी शायद बनावटी साज-सज्जा और स्वागत-सत्कार की औपचारिकताओं से परे रहकर, छत्तीसगढ़, और विशेषकर यहाँ बसे आदिवासियों, की रोज़मर्रा की ज़िंदगी की वास्तविकताओं से रू ब रू होना चाहते हैं. अगर ऐसा है, तो इसका हमें स्वागत करना चाहिए. साथ ही पूरा प्रयास करना चाहिए कि वे यहाँ के वासियों से, विशेषकर गरीबों से, एक गैर-प्रायोजित और अपनत्व के वातावरण में मिल सकें.

आख़िर, ये दौरा मात्र दो दिनों का भ्रमण नहीं, बल्कि छत्तीसगढ़ और उनके बीच के एक बहुत लंबे रिश्ते की बुनियाद है.

अमित जोगी

Friday, April 04, 2008

SHOWCASE: VIVEK TANK, THE HUMAN SHEHNAI!



Vivek Tank is a national award winning flutist. He is also a very gifted human shehnai (note that he is not a shehnai-wadak but shehnai-incarnate). In this pod, he does a solo recital first; then accompanies Anuj Sharma in a duet. Enjoy!

AJ

Monday, March 24, 2008

A Day in the Life of Amit Jogi



People often ask me what I do for a living. This is what a typical work day looks like (thanks to SNT):

16th February, 2008
1100: 100th Anniversary of Christian Mela, Matkudeep (70 kms)
1200: Teravi function of Siyaram Kaushik's father, Bilha (30 kms)
1400: Anjor Singh's father's Dasgatr, Dalli Rajhara (70+90 kms)
1700: Dedication of Bajrang Bali temple, Parkhanda (Kurud) (90 kms+40 kms)
2100: Ankit Bagbahra's wedding, Raipur (40 kms)
2130: Prakash Pagaria's son's wedding, Raipur

On this day, for instance, we drove about 400 kms across four districts (Raipur, Bilaspur, Durg, Dhamtari) to attend 2 weddings and 2 funerals, & 2 public functions where I was required to make speeches. Not surprisingly, by the time we reached Parkhanda, we were already 4 hours late.

Most visits follow a pattern: you are welcomed to shouts of Zindabaad, drum beats and the lighting of fire-crackers, then you walk in a procession to the venue where they seat you on a stage, about 40-50 people- the notables of the village- garland you as people come to you with applications and other sorts of requests, then the speeches begin ending with yours, following which the organizers present you with a shawl or some such memento. After that- if you've still got time- you might be taken to the organizer's home for tea, snacks and a photo-session with his family and followers. This pattern, I believe, has endured unchanged from the days of Mahatma Gandhi, India's first mass-politician (if not before!).

The stage, for me, presents a dilemma: on the one hand, it does increase your visibility (i.e., even the back-standers can see you) but the flip-side is that it creates a 'distance' between the people seated on the ground and those atop the stage. That is why I make it a point to go through the crowd where it is at its thickest- shaking as many hands as I can while chatting with them randomly (specially the youth and children)- on my way to and from the stage. More than anything else, this last aspect tells me what I need to really know: to share in the lives- the joys and sufferings- of the people who've given my family so much love.

This clip above shows pictures of my visit to Parkhanda.


AJ



Sunday, March 23, 2008

SNT's Holi Milan: I Dance!



SNT threw one helluva Holi party last evening. Anuj got his friend, Vivek Tank, the national award winning flutist, to perform for us; Amit Tiwari organized bhajias and thandai; and VN flew in some excellent kebabs from a joint in Mumbai. Needless to say, the occasion called for a certain amount of joie de vivre: in this clip, the youthful Dr. Farishta (Saibel's father) persuades me to dance.

Readers will note that despite my best efforts, I am no Travolta.

AJ

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Happy Holi from the King of Buffoons!

(l-r, Asif Memon, Yogesh Tiwari, Amit Jogi, Shailesh Nitin Trivedi, Anuj Sharma, Milind as Vedanti)

The Youth Congress invited me to attend their annual Holi Milan party. I accepted, blissfully unaware that they had decided to crown me the King of Buffoons in a very farcical public ceremony! Needless to say, the Crown (and the garland of vegetables that came with it) was well deserved.



Happy Holi!

AJ

[Photo courtesy: Navbharat, Raipur]

Kanha Escapade



After an exhaustive non-stop tour that began on the 16th of December last year, I decided that it was finally time for some rest. Consequently on the 25th of February, SNT, VN, Anuj and I sneaked off to the Kanha National Park: we spent one very happy day (and night) in the wilderness before a phone call rudely interrupted our brief idyll. These are some pictures of that time.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

SHOWCASE: Sketches from my Jail Diary (2005-07)

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Comeback: केशकाल में दुकाल

One of the posts I had published on this Blog last month was stolen: in total disregard of my request not to reprint it without taking my prior consent, Sunil Maheshwari, the editor a local Raipur-based eveninger, printed it on the front page of the “Daily Chhattisgarh” under the headline “Amit ne Internet pe virodhiyon ke saath hisaab chukta kiya” (Amit settles scores with opponents on Internet). Thereafter, it was free for all: other newspapers- including three columnists and at least one cartoonist- were quick to follow in Mr. Maheshwari’s footsteps; there was even some talk of my so-called ‘opponents’ posting their own counter-reply on the Internet (this, however, is yet to materialize).

His explanation, given to a mutual friend, was that “you can’t put posters all over town and expect people not to talk about it” makes some sense: the internet, after all, is public domain; nothing on it is, technically speaking, private. Intellectual Property Rights, in praxis, don’t account for much, I guess, especially in a world inhabited by the likes of Mr. Maheshwari. My grudge, if one can call it that, was not that the post was published; but with who published it, and the somewhat myopic perspective given to that publication. Surely, a writer ought to have control over that much at least.

In any case, I think removing the post from the Blog wasn’t right: it has, I believe, sent the wrong message; that writers can be hounded into submission by a self-proclaimed dictatorship of pseudo-intellectuals, or that intra-party democracy is dead in the Congress party. Neither of these assumptions is true.

Consequently, “केशकाल में दुकाल ” makes its comeback on ½ Freedoms! I am sorry it was removed in the first place.

AJ
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Friday, March 07, 2008

Amending the Indian Youth Congress Constitution

NOTE: You can also comment on this here, on the IYC blog.

I have spent the better part of the past two months redrafting the Constitution of the Indian Youth Congress. It has not been changed (or for that matter- read) since it was first adopted in 1983: consequently, the late Smt. Indira Gandhi continues to be lifetime chairperson of its penultimate Central Advisory Board. Some of the provisions suggested, like having two-yearly elections to fill organizational posts, have never been put into actual practice. More than a quarter of a century since its adoption, the overall feeling one gets from reading the document, therefore, is that it belongs to another age; and is hardly suited to the needs of our own time.

In all, I have proposed more than 27 major and several minor amendments. Suggestions I had proposed in an earlier presentation (Blueprint for Building a New IYC) have also been incorporated. Below is a brief 15-point Synopsis of the Amendments:

1. Membership rules have been changed to incorporate one common Form (as opposed to three for becoming primary and active members and for renewal of membership) to be filled annually by members; performance-determined levels of membership have been assigned; and strategies have been proposed for substantially enhancing the number of women members. (Art. VIII)

2. Form A has been made digitally readable and includes blood group-type information and an eye-donation form. This will transform IYC into India's biggest blood bank and eye-donor agency.

3. Schedule One contains the algorithm that the digital-reader would follow for determining membership-level based on information supplied in Form A. (Art. IX)

4. To increase organizational-penetration at the grassroots level, two new primary units have been introduced: booth-level Rajiv Gandhi Shakti Kendras (RGSKs) and panchayat-level SHGs called Indira Gandhi Svasahayata Samitis (IGSSs). (Art. XI A and B)

5. RGSKs are purely political bodies dealing with booth-management during elections.

6. IGSSs are self-sustaining, income generating, socio-economic units ultimately aimed at creating what could possibly be the largest multifaceted NGO in the country: personally I can think of no better way to counter Ekal vidyalayas, Vanvasi kalyan ashrams and other such RSS outfits that have infiltrated the rural belt of India. They combine a distinct social welfare agenda with innovative income-generating asset-creating techniques within the political framework of the YC.

7. IGSSs are governed by a separate subsidiary constitution provided in Schedule Two.

8. Both the RGSK and IGSS networks will be sort of a proto-cadre of the Congress.

9. A formula has been worked out for the number of elected and nominated posts in IYC, PYC, DYC and BYC executive committees; precise rules for work allocation have been framed; specific tasks assigned; monitoring and feedback mechanisms are in place; and guidelines for setting up departments and their functions have also been specified. (Arts. XI C, XII, XIII, XVI, XIX)

10. The election process itself has been overhauled completely: a CEC (Central Election Committee) has been created as an autonomous body; precise schedules, guidelines, and modus operandi have been laid down; executive committees are proposed to be dissolved to prevent any overriding interference/tweaking with the election process; the block level elections would be direct; executive committee members thus chosen would elect the DYC executive, who will in turn elect the PYC. All elected executive committee members- Block, District and Pradesh- would then be delegates at a national convention where the national committee would be elected. (Art. XVIII)

11. Differential Criteria has been fixed for who can vote and contest- based primarily on their involvement with the organization (to eliminate the possibility of candidates making members only for the purpose of getting themselves elected while also ensuring that performance- merit- gets rewarded). (Art. VIII, IX)

12. Dates- and time- have been specified for simultaneous nationwide meetings of executive committees; & block, district, state and national-level conventions; agendas- and formats of minutes- have been set.

13. A permanent training facility (Rajiv Gandhi Yuva Prashikshan Kendra)- and a monthly magazine- have been incorporated in Schedule Three of the constitution.

14. A comprehensive Budget has been proposed: new sources of revenue have been created; collection points identified; and precise function-based distribution of revenues done. (Art. X)

15. A definitive target-oriented socio-political agenda has been incorporated into Art. III (Functions) based on additional institutions and functions that have been inbuilt into the constitution.

Below I reproduce the text of the 1983 document; followed by my comment, and the proposed Amendment. Your suggestions are, as always, welcome, particularly with respect to Art. II dealing with the OBJECT (AIM) of the IYC.

Amit Aishwarya Jogi
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

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CONTACT ME. मुझसे संपर्क करें

Amit Aishwarya Jogi
Anugrah, Civil Lines
Raipur- 492001
Chhattisgarh, INDIA
Telephone/ Fascimile: +91 771 4068703
Mobile: +91 942420 2648 (AMIT)
email: amitaishwaryajogi@gmail.com
Skype: jogi.amit
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