It’s been a year since my
last post. The reasons are obvious.
During the last 2½ years,
I’ve been travelling relentlessly, by foot (almost 2000 kilometers) and by car
(more than 200,000 kilometers). I’ve addressed more than 4000 public meetings,
both large and small. I’ve been arrested, tear-gassed, water-cannoned and
baton-charged at least 200 times in every district and block headquarters of
Chhattisgarh.
And to top it all, Richa, my
poor wife of fifteen months- whose greatest attribute, according to me, has
been her stratospheric tolerance- has not only had to put up with my constant
absences but also the increasing invasions of our fast-shrinking marital space
on the rare occasions that I’m around.
Politics, for me, isn’t so
much about persons as it is about issues. In particular, those issues that
affect citizens most directly: like when the state uproots them from their
homes and hearths at the behest of powerful industrial lobbies; when it fails
to protect their right to life- their right not to get killed, their right not
to get raped repeatedly, their right not to die of poisonous air and water;
when it time and again betrays their faith, taking them for fools; when it
brazenly turns into an extortionist and a robber of the state-exchequer; when
it under-sells to outsiders the land and its untold natural wealth, which their
ancestors had so carefully preserved for them since time immemorial; when it
over-charges them for things they shouldn’t have to pay for at all; when it
willfully tries to turn an entire people into a generation of wife-beating
drunks. To me, these ‘existential issues’ are infinitely more important than
who occupies what position.
If I can, in some small
way, contribute to an Awakening whereby the people of Chhattisgarh, especially
its Youth, rise up to take charge of their destinies, I think my politics would
have served its purpose.
Amit Aishwarya Jogi
March 27, 2013
मेरे पिछले लेख से अब तक एक साल बीत चुका है। न लिख पाने के कारण प्रत्यक्ष रूप से दिखाई देते हैं।
