Hi all,

To start off, I apologize to all of you. To those who read my last post, to those who responded, and to those who didn’t.

Why the apology?

Because I’m not going ahead with what I’d proposed – the Indian vote bank (killed, dead, buried, dug up, cremated).

In terms of response, my plan elicited next to nothing. At the risk of wounding my already bruised ego, I realize that I was wasting time. Maybe what the honorable Mr Naqvi suggested is true after all – that a few women wearing lipstick and powder and a few men wearing suits do NOT represent the country. We saw this truth being driven home by the election results – the party that presided over the carnage in Bombay was voted back to power in Delhi and brought out of the wilderness in Rajasthan. Don’t get me wrong – I do not hold a candle for the other parties. Just that, I felt the people would vote against a party that had failed to protect its citizens, time and again. This should have been especially true in Delhi simply because of the affinity Bombay and Delhi share, by dint of being two of the largest cities in India. And it’s not as though Delhi has not been affected by terrorism. It has, in the very recent past.

Lest I be mistaken to be a BJP advocate, I’d like to clear my name here as well, though it is a conviction I hold that among the present parties, I think the BJP is our best bet based on their past record on infrastructure development – it is a fact that they ushered in an era that reaped rich dividends; cases in point - the golden quadrilateral highway project, the Bombay-Pune Expressway. In this context, they did in 5 years what the Congress failed to do in 50. Also, I think the BJP has a lot more nationalists than any other party, especially the Congress which has only Gandhians, and I don’t refer to the Mahatma here. What then equates the BJP with all the others?
• Dirty Games 1 – remember Tehelka and what happened to it? For years together we heard about how the Congress and the Gandhis made the CBI and IB their lapdogs, that they had no respect for the rule of Law where the netas were concerned. When Tehelka ran the sting operation on the BJP, the party did exactly the same thing. In fact, what happened to Tehelka and their promoters was eerily reminiscent of what Indira Gandhi had done with Indian Express and Arun Shourie. And the clincher for me – Mr Vajpayee was the PM, someone who was considered as one of the most liberal politicians in the country even by his opponents. All that much-proclaimed ‘difference’ went out the window, proving that beneath the khadi exteriors, they’re all made essentially of the same skin.
• Dirty Games 2 – remember Gujarat? I expect a whole lot of hate mails/comments on this, but here it is anyway. I’m sick and tired of hearing (yes, even from supposedly educated upper-crust friends) that it was a reaction to the train-burning incident in Godhra and that no-one talks about that. My dear, dear friends - the Godhra incident was perpetrated by criminals, period – catch them, hang them from the nearest lamp-posts. What happened in Gujarat thereafter was perpetrated by a government. There’s a difference between the two. I really don’t care about a party’s political beliefs – once it is in government, their responsibility towards the party ceases and their sole responsibility gravitates towards the people whom they govern, regardless of who voted for them. Once the BJP was in government, they ceased to be BJP, they were then the Govt of Gujarat, and that’s got to mean something. The security of each and every citizen of the state was/is their responsibility, and they failed to fulfill their responsibility. And it didn’t stop there – by all accounts, the so-called government was actively involved in the killing and pillage of its OWN people. We could argue forever about nothing having been proved, but that’s an argument for the birds, I would not want to get into it since we all know what the inquiry commissions are all about. Whether or not a govt accepts a committee or commission’s findings, is directly related to the convenience of the findings. And, surprise surprise – the BJP is not alone in this. What happened to the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 is well known. And the greatest proof of all the netas being of the same pod, I feel, is what the Congress did about the Justice Shrikrishna Committee which submitted its report on the Bombay riots of 1992-93 – it’s quite reasonable to assume that all these guys get together in the evenings to laugh at OUR stupidity over a drink or two. So much for the ‘difference’.

Also, I realized (with inputs from a lot of you) that what I was doing by harping on the Pakistan angle so much (the main plank of my was-to-be website) was, being the proverbial ostrich, burying my head in the ground and ignoring reality – that WE must set OUR house in order first. In a country where you can get a driving license without being able to recognize the difference between clutch and brake, where you can get a graduation certificate without ever reading a single book, where you can get a ration card without being a citizen of the country, where you can hold multiple passports for a price – are we really surprised that any tom, dick, or jehadi harry can waltz in and use us for target practice? Isn’t it time to point fingers at ourselves instead of all around?

To make a long story short, I too had fleetingly joined the ranks of the myriad citizens who find that there’s no-one to vote for.

Happily, I can’t stay cynical for too long. I have recently been introduced to a new political party – the PROFESSIONALS PARTY OF INDIA or the PPI (www.ppi.net.in). They’re a group of educated citizens who decided to put their time and money where our mouths are and DO something. Their mantra is ‘CHANGE FOM THE TOP’ and tagline is ‘ACTION FOR CHANGE’. They’re fielding candidates for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. To all the naysayers who would choose to express doubts over their absence of a track record - I’d urge you to have a look at the track records of the existing bunch. Come on now, you can’t convince me that a new, relatively young, educated, already successful group of Indians - who are (for a change) NOT asking for votes on the basis of religion, language, caste or community – can do any worse than our present lot!!

In abject apology, but still hopeful,
Bharatram Gaba
Bombay