So, a new era has been ushered in (supposedly). BJP won the 2014 elections with a staggering majority. Achche din ane wale hain. And why is it so?
Because, ab ki baar, modi sarkaar.
This line had been the crux of BJP’s election campaign. Wherever you looked, you could find various innovative and creative (and frankly, sometimes plain weird) couplets ending with the above line. But did we, even for once, stop to think what is fundamentally wrong with this particular line? I guess not. Well, let me tell you. What is wrong here is that it says modi sarkaar, not BJP sarkaar. And there, my dear friends, lies the biggest problem of our country.
Many of you might still not have understood what I am trying to say here. Let me explain. At the end of the day ‘Narendra Modi’ is just a single person, and the government of a country is NOT made of a single man.
Modi might be the Prime Minister, and he might be the head of BJP and he might hold a lot of sway over the party members, but in no way does it make the current government modi sarkaar. We might have forgotten, but India is a democracy, not a dictatorship.
The campaigning motto of BJP, in one line, explains a lot about how we Indians think. Mr. Modi is a great man, no doubt. Under his able leadership, Gujarat has come a long way in terms of development. But why do we forget, that he did not do it alone? Mr. Modi had an able group of people who implemented his policies properly. A strong leadership definitely makes a difference, but until and unless the people who follow the leader can actually be as efficient as him, the difference is not much of a difference at all! And we, as the people of India, have always overlooked this aspect of an able government. We pile up hopes and aspirations and expectations on the back of a single person, revere him, talk about him all the time and obsess over him. But we are as quick to pull him down from the pedestal we themselves have placed him upon when he cannot come up to our expectations.
Why do we, as the citizens of the largest democracy, always forget that the government is not a one-man-army?
We have piled up all our expectations on a single man, expecting him to perform huge feats, removing all the problems of our country with one fell sweep of his hand. In essence, we are obsessed with Mr. Modi.
Just the other day, I was watching the news about the launch of the PSLV (if you have no idea what I am talking about, honestly, go hit your head on the wall), and what do I see? There was more footage of Narendra Modi’s reactions to the launch than the launch itself!!! Sentences like, Modi ka sapna sach hua, or something on similar lines, were the headlines, instead of something like PSLV launch, proud moment for India!! This was just too much for me. I mean, seriously??? During such a proud moment for our country, all the news stations do is cover Mr. Modi’s reaction???
I admit I find such kind of behaviour slightly disturbing. What does this say about the people of our country? We pin our hopes on a single man to remove all the issues of our country which had sprung up in the first place due to our collective corruption, greed and ignorance (Don’t bother to deny it. Every single one of us is guilty of all of this at one time or other). Is that what we are now? A country of 1 billion fan girls????
I respect Mr. Modi a lot. But I am a skeptic. I have seen parties coming to power with tall promises, but hardly any of them could fulfil even a handful of those. This has made me more skeptical still. I cannot believe in achche din, till they actually come. And for the good days to come, we have to stop obsessing and become realistic. We need to do our own bit to help Mr. Modi. And I have a feeling he would appreciate that more.
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