VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 239 Date: 09.07.2018
Contents:
1. Do Not Politicise Surgical Strikes
2. India On Its Way To Lynchistan
3. Why Is Konkani Dying?
4. Modi Unmasked
Do Not Politicise Surgical Strikes
Surgical strikes is not an end in itself but a means. It is just a military operation to be used in cases of need like Israel uses it, there is nothing to crow about it. Too much is being made out of the single publicised surgical strike we made against Pakistan. With mediocre minds, a big deal is being made out of the surgical strikes to try and impress the illiterate electorate but intelligent minds will assess this news differently. Take it on a factual basis, what does our army do in peacetime, nothing, unless it is used by the government to fight insurgency and terrorism in some of the border States. Surgical strikes are part of their SOP to protect us from the enemy. It does require political sanction which once it has been given, the surgical strikes should be used as and when required. We cannot sit idle waiting for terrorists to infiltrate into J&K to create chaos like the other day in the papers it said that 150 terrorists were waiting at the LoC to cross over. So essentially there is no need for publicity to be given to surgical strikes nor politicise them. As long as they are kept under wraps they remain an effective military tool but not like it is being done now with even the Army Chief joining in to project it as a larger than life effort for the Indian Army. However, if this was the first and last surgical strike that we are or were capable of politicise it by all means and ring in the death of the image of the Indian fighting force.
India On Its Way To Lynchistan
The spate of lynchings that have dotted the entire country from Tripura to the latest in Maharashtra are nothing but the Gujarat model of riots that is being implemented. Just like the Gujarat model of development that was being tom-tomed as something that has to be replicated in all States, the new agenda seems to be to replicate the 2002 Gujarat riots across the country. The reasons for the lynchings can be as diverse as related to the sacred cow, kidnapping, to child lifting for harvesting of organs etc. etc. The lynchings continue to happen because the government in the first cases failed to act quickly and in time to punish the offenders. With mob psychology coming to the fore since with the initial offenders not being punished, others got emboldened to pursue their own personal and criminal agendas. Knowing full well that the government would not act against them such troublemakers continue to make mayhem with impunity. Not only that there are cases where the BJP MLA's & MP's support these miscreants with the Jharkhand BJP leader leading the pack claIming that he would meet all legal costs of those arrested in a lynching case. This is exactly what happened in Gujarat in 2002 as the rioters ran amok not a word was uttered to stop them from their communal frenzy nor any administrative action taken to put an end to the destruction of life and property. At that time for 3 days the rioters ran amok which got Vajpayee to remind Narendra Modi to follow Rajdharma. Strangely then Modi seemed to have lost his tongue which affliction continues with him to this day. Whenever there is any major law and order eruption in the country Modi seems stunned and refuses to make any comment. Just like the writer's block Modi seems to suffer from an orator's block where he seems to be at an utter loss for words. Even when rape cases were escalating it required persistent prodding for Modi to come out with a statement that women should be respected in our society. What can you expect from such kind of people who either preside over riots or are accused in murder and/or encounter cases. It is no wonder that the country is going to the dogs. The situation is like you have goondas in a locality where their goons run amok knowing full well that their bosses will not pull them up. These goons then try to outdo each other and compete to see who can do the most atrocious nuisance to catch the bosses eye and garner compliments. This is the state to which Modi and this BJP government has brought India in just 4 years. Give them another term then we will surely end up like Pakistan or be on the road to any country in Middle Africa. Postscript: Jayant Sinha, Yeshwant Sinha's son (this is being mentioned since one would have thought with his education and legacy it was expected a certain amount of political sagacity, a sense of morality and cultural sensibility would be seen from him) and a Minister in the Central Cabinet garlanded some of the accused in the Jharkhand cow lynching case and gave them sweets at his residence! These people had just got bail from the High Court. This is the BJP today.
Why Is Konkani Dying?
The upcoming Konkani Sammelan to be held on 8th July 2018 will be seized with the issue of the drop in population of those that specify Konkani as their mother tongue. No doubt there can be a lacunae in the figures put out arising from the Census 2011 but the fact remains that all Konkani speaking people know that the language is under threat not only from English but also from Hindi. In these times the important thing to do is to safeguard the interest of the language in the broadest possible manner. However, what is being done by the Konkani protagonists particularly those that are resident in Goa is that they remain rigid, parochial and obstinate in their outlook towards the language. This particularly as regards to the script which is specified as Devanagari in the Official Languages Act. What these people conveniently forget is that some among the self-same Konkani protagonists from Goa recommended this stipulation which the Central authorities without having any great knowledge in the matter put in. Now these protagonists claim that because the Act says it is Devanagari script for Konkani it cannot be changed! Even if the Act says so, these protagonists can show a broad minded attitude for nurturing the language and ensuring its growth. This can be done by promoting all the scripts in which Konkani is written mainly Romi, Kannada and Malayalam. However, they refuse to do so and pompously talk of the preponderance of the Devanagari script. The resultant effect has been that the growth of the Konkani language has been stifled. Even the process of giving awards in the Konkani language requires that if material is written in any other script, it needs to be put in the Devanagari script before it can be considered for the award. Such convoluted processes of which there are many only end up complicating the growth of the language and lead to a lack of interest among Konkani speaking people to use it. The few awards that are given by following these complex processes are cited by the diehard Konkani protagonists from Goa as proof that the system works! Little do they realise that if all scripts are accepted the number of Konkani works coming in for awards will become a flood proving that the language is alive and kicking. Even at the Konkani Sammelan you will find that these rigid Konkani protagonists supporting the Devanagari script and the exclusion of others will use the Census figures as a diversionary issue to take attention away from the script. Any language for its unhindered and free growth should be encouraged to prosper in a manner the people want it to be, keeping in mind their history, their evolution and the constraints they face. That is why the many scripts have evolved for Konkani more as a compulsion of historical necessity. However, if the pundits of the language want to negate all this and support a rigid framework of a one script policy it is sad state of affairs. History will not pardon these people who throttled the Konkani language and accelerated its untimely death.
Modi Unmasked
Narendra Modi has all the time in the world to talk inanities in his attempt to impress gullible minds with convoluted logic and high sounding figures but he has no time to talk about the mushrooming number of rape cases that dot the geography across India and the epidemic of lynching that is spreading like wildfire through the Indian landscape.
On the inanities first. These quotes are all over the last week from our eminent PM. Modi claimed that some 4 Million senior citizens gave up the concessions on rail fare that they were entitled to. These figures are irrelevant since one does not know if any of these people ever travel by train and even if they do, how often do they travel to make any material difference on the Railways bottom line. One cannot understand why Modi has to concentrate on savings from concessions to senior citizens which is peanuts compared to the huge amounts of so much money that is being wasted on other projects and schemes. Is there great guts and glory in pinching the pockets of senior citizens any further? Similar credit was desired to be sought in the case of LPG subsidy some years back when it was found that quoted figures of those stated to have given up the subsidy were largely inflated by the Oil PSU's and wrongly accounted, which Modi was blithely quoting to earn brownie points. Unfortunately the brown points turned black scarring Modi's face.
Then Modi quoted that Karnataka and Bengal have claimed that they have created a massive number of jobs while the Centre is blamed for the condition of the economy that is not creating enough jobs for our youth. So his question was is the Centre creating joblessness if the charge of not creating jobs is put at their doorstep. Here again Modi, the master of hyperbole, should know that just like during election times Modi says whatever he likes without assessing the impact of his statements, so also the same liberty and licence need be given to Karnataka. In an election year they can claim anything and no one will hold them accountable unless it is people like Modi who find in it something to make use of. The same goes for Bengal where Mamata Banerjee and the TMC live by hyperbole and violence and the figures that they quote on job creation should be taken with a pinch of salt. The fact that youth are leaving Bengal in droves for job opportunities in the rest of the country and abroad is an open secret which would not have happened if there were jobs in Bengal, which a Bengali hates to leave. Modi being aware of the state of the economy to which sorry state he has brought it to, should know the extent of jobs created by him. If one is not wrong Modi had promised in 2014 that 1 crore jobs would be created. Let him now declare against that promise how many jobs his government created. On this issue Modi has said that there is a lacunae in the process of assessing job creation. Which means what? He can declare a figure but since the results are not measurable, he cannot be held accountable. This is the duplicity of the man. If Modi was serious in job creation then what was he doing for the last 4 years and why did he not put in place a system for measuring the number of jobs that were created.
The other strategy that Modi has been adopting lately is to carry the war into the enemy's camp. This is what he did by raising the issue of the Emergency which is history and something which happened some 42 years ago. Similar is the approach when he blames the Congress for undermining public institutions which are the pillars of our democracy. Actually the situation is the opposite. The extent to which public institutions have been undermined since 2014 has not happened since 1947 in free India. The list is long in hierarchical order starting with the RBI, the Election Commission, the Supreme Court which has lately found its voice, one is actually not sure about this, and reiterating its position as one of the very important pillars of our democracy. Why the Opposition and particularly the Congress does not call Modi's bluff at these times is not understood. By sustained rebuttal of Modi's accusations it will be easy to discredit him. Actually Rahul Gandhi instead of obliquely trying to combat Modi through tweets should have a concerted campaign against Modi and the BJP for having failed in its commitments to the nation and creating a de-facto Emergency like situation in the country and in addition making it a Rapistan and Lynchistan. By these actions the position of India in the free world has been devalued many times over as we are seeing in multiple reports emanating from different agencies which say that freedom of speech has been severely curtailed, it is the most dangerous place in the world for women etc. etc.
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