Unwilling warriors

Tarun Vijay

The governance was never so fatigued. Led by unwilling, hesitant, ready-to-resign, tired and moist cartridges that end up taking a potshot at each other through signed newspaper columns. The irony is, this "secular" dispensation is working wonderfully to make people more and more faithful and believe in some divine power, which must be wondering why this billion-strong nation cannot produce some leaders who take responsibility.


Our Prime Minister had a nice dinner, the most luxurious one Obama had given to any one, last time and this time he happily lapped up the sermons of a lady in love with Pakistan ostensibly wearing the burden to make two school going kids to behave in a nuke jungle. We didn’t even murmur against the completely unacceptable arrogance of Washington. We didn’t have to talk to Pakistan, the mother of all terrorism, without getting a foolproof assurance that it won’t support terrorists against us. Yet we began unilaterally a dialogue process only to be red-faced at the end of it. Why? Yielding to external pressures is a sure sign of fatigue and a resigned mood.


We don’t need to have their nuclear reactors, never used by the seller country for the last 50 years and we can met our energy requirements with solar, hydroelectric and thermal power plants. Yet we are buying the US reactors. We don t have to yield to the US to ink a civil nuclear responsibility bill, so insultingly drafted against our people. Yet we are pushing it. We were not obliged to send our foreign minister for a Beijing trip – to inaugurate a festival commemorating 60 years of bilateral diplomatic ties unless their prime minister had assured an appointment, a normal courtesy extended to a friendly country’s foreign minister. Last time too Pranab Mukherjee came back with a long face without meeting any high-ranking leader worth India’s status. Yet S M Krishna went on his first visit to China as minister for external affairs with a bang created through his XP division and returned without even a whimper.


Fatigued policy makers. Tired and confused itinerary providers. Fatigued and myopic statue builders. Who are so unsure about their popularity that they love to build their own memorials lest their followers forget to do so when they are gone. Fatigued warriors yawn to get permission to garland stone statues and conveniently forget the living soldiers who died for the cause of democracy and constitution. This silence of the dynasty, otherwise too vocal on poor and women’s empowerment and MNREAGA, is deadlier than the Maoist bullets. Look at the public condemnation of his pal Chidambaram by Digvijay Singh in a signed article. The chips would fall in their place.


Could a Congressman like Digvijay have the courage to criticize his own home minister publicly without the blessings and the tacit approval of 10 Janpath?

Signs of yawning and fatigued governance, which can't, look beyond the small time games. And such dangerous ones at that. Making a political "pilgrimage" to the homes of the terrorists in Azamgarh was one, then the other was to keep eyes wide shut at the cannibalistic celebration at the factory that produced largest number of Naxalites and their cohorts, JNU, on hearing the news of the killing of 65 jawans by Maoists. How can a government, if it means governance, tolerate such a grave insult to state power? The students who celebrated the death of the soldiers should have been booked with Kasab and tried for treason.


Instead the whole issue has been put under the carpet and campaign Uttar Pradesh is in full swing for reasons known to all. Here is the nation shrunk to the vote box. Boundaries shrunk to the domains to be "conquered". What about the rest of the nation and the larger issues of security and an equitable distribution of economic opportunities and wealth?


The state bonded to a party’s loss and profits prospect and the opponents being unfairly treated as has been in the cases of Uttarakhand and Himachal recently where the sanctioned plan outlays were withdrawn or cancelled. Only fatigued and the disinterested governors can afford to be so careless and callous towards their own countrymen.


The other example simply reminds us why we lost Somnath to Ghazni in 1024. Hang the man you hate most to placate the black goddess of sham secularism if you can. But to keep silence and feel pleasure at a foreign delegation insulting your own countryman, without any rhyme or reason except that of an intense hatred, is a crime as was committed by the back stabbers during the resistance war against Ghazni.


Only a fatigued and defocused government can have no strength to protest and answer appropriately the continued incursions by a mischievous neighbour. The soldiers who are asked to defend the frontiers are ill equipped. Nothing moves till a couple of accidents like that of Dantewara occur. At any critical moment, when the enemies find us unprepared, the chinks are exposed as we saw in 1962 and on 26/11. Should we allow that again? Aren’t the people as much responsible for allowing bad governance as much as the bad governors are responsible for the atrociously unacceptable state of affairs?