I was just now watching the weekly debate program on NDTV called “We the People”; due to its heavily tilted nature I don’t normally watch it but today I watched it (online) because Kanchan Gupta was among the panelists — couldn’t watch the entire program due to time constraint.

The topic of the debate was should P Chidambaram (India’s Home Minister) have used the term “saffron terrorism” while refereeing to the Hindu fringe groups indulging in random terrorist activities.

The common problem in such debates is there are always two differing opinions and every side presents irrational arguments while trying to prove the other side wrong. Of course, all the arguments are not irrational but the format of the program and the way Barkha Dutt conducts it, particular views, even if they make perfect sense to an informed person, get distorted and seem irrational.

So there was a group trying to downplay the Islamist terrorism while thoroughly demonizing saffron terrorism and then there was the the other group (as it happens on all NDTV debates there are just two people differing and the majority supports a particular view) who was trying to downplay Hindu terrorism while listing out instances of Islamist terrorists activities.

The problem with such debates is that nobody is actually interested in talking about the root cause. For instance people were trying to justify Muslim youths becoming terrorists by referring to the babri masjid demolition, the 1992 Bombay riots and Gujarat riots and many other instances of injustice that normally happen in the Indian society in particular and the lesser developed world in general.

Similarly the two isolated voices constituting of Kanchan Gupta and Tavleen Singh were trying to prove how the Islamist terrorism is an international problem and it doesn’t stem from the way Muslims have been targeted by the so-called Hindu nationalists.

This is sad because nobody talks about terrorism as a common problem; they are always pointing fingers at each other and in this way this problem will never be solved. It is like two neighboring ladies quarrelling with each other about who threw the garbage in the street.

The same thing happens with Maoist terrorism: there are some people who give all the reasons under the sun for people becoming Maoists and there are some people who don’t want to go into the details of why people feel victimized by the system and take to the gun.

Terrorists are simply terrorists. They take inspiration from religious texts and misinterpreted contexts but other than this they are simply criminals killing people whether in India or abroad and they should be dealt with accordingly. Muslim terrorists think that the entire world is against Muslims and always trying to insult them or hurt them and the so-called Hindu nationalists (regarding India) derive their motivation from historical facts that say that Muslim invaders perpetrated unparalleled atrocities and eventually they were responsible for the partition. In today’s context, such historical facts are irrelevant because no matter how hard you try you cannot go into the past and undo them. Muslims were invaders but right now most of the Muslims in the country are those who converted to Islam due to the problems they faced in Hinduism.

People trying to explain why Muslims become terrorists get too occupied with playing the victim card and pointing fingers at the majority community, in India’s case, Hindus. Of course, there are some Hindu groups that spread hatred but then such groups exist in every religion and they never enjoy the social acceptance at the grassroots level the way, sadly, Muslim terrorists enjoy. And herein lies the difference.

Terrorism has adopted its current shape primarily due to rampant appeasement and this is happening all across the globe. It seems politicians and lawmakers are not actually interested in solving this problem because if they were the problem would have been solved decades ago. when they wanted to knock down Saddam Hussein they did it within months. with Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, it’s almost been a decade. one reason can be that Osama is an American Frankenstein. the same happens in India. Our politicians have planted journalists and intellectuals who are constantly pointing fingers at the soft target (Hindu majority) and finding excuses for Muslim/Islamist terrorism. They have done this because they don’t want to solve the problem. They want to keep people occupied. They always want to say, look, there is a bigger problem so, stop ranting about silly issues like corruption, backwardness, lack of development, bizarre social disparity and lawlessness.

In India’s case, the solution doesn’t lie in pointing fingers at each other. It lies in branding terrorism as normal crime and then punishing them as criminals not as some ideological crusaders who are carrying out some sort of “war”. Only then we will be able to have a color-less and religion-less terrorism and only then we will be able to tackle it without “hurting” sentiments.

Normally I don’t participate in discussions that involve politics and nationalism because everybody has his or her own opinion (including me) and you cannot really change people’s opinion unless they really want to change it. Anyway, a few days ago Amrit (yes, the world can never have enough of Amrits ) on Facebook asked, “Do we really love our country?” Some exchanges ensued and as usual there were some ambiguous answers, including mine.

And then Susanta, again, on Facebook, expressed his disagreement on the upcoming BJP bandh against the recent fuel price hike, calling it a “political sham” and another, tiny discussion ensued between us, and of course, we couldn’t agree.

These two chains of thoughts are related. Does really loving your country mean proclaiming your love and feeling all misty-eyed when patriotic songs are played, or does it mean you actually participate in the process of nation building and political engagement?

Take for instance this bandh. Theoretically I’m against bandhs and strikes — political, social, religious and industrial — but there is a big difference between theory and practice. We live in a world where people screw you right left and center if you don’t have a voice. The same goes for the government — any government — if there is no medium to show or express your disagreement, it’ll start screwing you big time. Bandhs and strikes — whether you like them are not — are a part of democracy and they are sanctioned by our constitution. In fact, near Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, there is a dedicated place where you can go and stage a protest against anything, called Dharna Sthal or Virodh Pradarshan Sthal.

Of course I’m totally against forcing people to down their shutters and the entire affair going into the hands of political goons, but there is a reason why such ugliness creeps in. As citizens we’re too bothered about “today” rather than tomorrow. In order to earn a few hundred bucks today, we don’t want to protest and save ourselves hundreds of thousands of bucks that we end up spending due to government’s exploitative policies. How many citizens protested when the present government waived a 60,000 crore (around 6,00,000 million) debt of farmers so that a few politicians could keep getting money from multinationals that control the food market? After all this money went from our taxes. The same goes for money being (contemplated yet) given to the Bhopal gas tragedy victims: again from our pockets. This money should have come from the company that caused the disaster due to criminal negligence.

Coming to the fuel price hike, no matter how politically motivated the bandh may be, the common citizen should participate to let the government know we’re pissed off. I know many will say that the government is simply streamlining the prices and so everything happening concurrent to that cannot be avoided. Do you know how heavily the western governments subsidize their farmers so that they can throttle competition overseas? Many of our farmers are killing themselves primarily for this reason (and also because of the genetically modified seeds, against, being pushed down their throats by greedy politicians). How many of us actually protest, or are even aware of that? Fuel price hike immediately pushes many food items out of the reach of the poor. Our maid and her family survives on bare minimums. Even the proverbial daal-roti is being snatched away. In the past 3 years the food prices have increased more than 100%, or even more in the case of pulses and fruits. How many of us are hitting the roads to protest?

Sadly, in our country we don’t strive for quality of life, we simply live. Do you ever think why South Africa is able to hold the FIFA World Cup despite getting independence in the 90s and we’re still wallowing in the doldrums of Asian Games and Common Wealth Games even after being independent for more than 60 years? People are crying over Brazil and Argentina and Italy and Germany and this and that, in India. Don’t we feel ashamed that despite being such a big country we don’t have our own football team to cheer for and we’re forced to act like party crashers?

Do you ever think why we don’t have post-independence architectural examples and why our president still lives in a building constructed for the British viceroys? Even Dubai has better buildings then our metropolitan cities. Why don’t we have even a single world class software or hardware product? Why do we keep silent when our biodiversity is being destroyed and our tigers are being made extinct? Why do thousands of Indian citizens still die of hunger every year? Why don’t we protest enmasse when 6 people in Rajasthan are swept by the torrent and not a single helicopter can be sent to save them and on top of that the CM says they did everything they could? In another country such a CM would have been sacked and arrested.

In India we are too laid back for our own good, and we have this suicidal tendency to side with those we should actually be opposing. This is a historical trait, right from the days of ancient India when foreign invaders came and some of our local rulers supported them, and the rest of the history, hopefully, you know. The same is happening after the independence. Election after election we keep on electing the same crooks and then feel so smug while being screwed in all the holes we’ve got. When the TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan was killed in Vasant Kunj the Delhi chief minister actually had the temerity to say that she shouldn’t have ventured out so late in the night in the first place (she was returning from her duty) knowing quite well the same losers will vote again for her government.

Whatever progress we’ve made so far is despite the government, not due to the government.

So is it some anti-government, anti-establishment tirade? No, I’m just saying, we don’t really love our country. Country? We don’t even love each other. When was the last time you smiled at your neighbor or a neighbor smiled at you (if you smile at somebody he or she will probably take offense)? When was the last you paid the poor rickshaw wala or the auto wala ten rupees extra just because he is your fellow countryman and going through a tough situation (constantly rising prices, for instance)? We live in this delusional, jingoistic mentality that makes us think we love our country. All the love fizzles out the moment somebody suggests that come to a protest march or organize a protest against something unfair happenings around you. Then all of a sudden we start weighing the pros and cons and then put our heads back into the good old and comfortable ostrich hole.

If you love your country, start protesting. Start having a voice.

A couple of days ago India celebrated the 35th anniversary of Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi. You can read a quick recap in this Kanchan Gupta’s column. And here is the WikiPedia entry on The Emergency in India for those who might think “Whathaheck is that man?!”

Remember, how a few years ago the Congress government tried to block blogs?

The Churmuri blog is asking its readers: how will media react if emergency is reimposed? (nice excerpts from Kuldip Nayar).

Let’s add people too because to be frank, it’s the people who let dictatorships and emergency-type situations happen, and it has been proven (recently read a book review on the topic but sadly cannot find the link now). So what will happen if dictatorship/emergency is reimposed in India?

• The Internet will be blocked. By this I don’t mean you won’t be able to access websites, I mean you won’t be even able to connect to the Internet. It’s the most powerful tool people have in their hands and the mainstream media already feels sidelined as people rely on each other for information rather than on newspapers and TV. Although 95% of India might not be connected yet, it’s the easiest way to reach out to the outside world through blogs, videos and images. Majority of people will justify (those who are educated but still vote for the Congress) this act as a step towards ensuring national security and preventing communal forces from posting “damaging” material on the Internet. Even countries like China, Iran and Pakistan don’t block the Internet, but I’m sure the Indian government will.
• If, due to some bizzarre reason, the Internet is not blocked then Twitter and Facebook will surely be. Again, if not blocked, monitoring will be exceptional. All dissenting accounts will be blocked or removed. People with no political opinion or those who decide to have no political opinion will tell those who try to have a political opinion to just have a chill pill and let the government do its job (or “you asked for it”).
• Right now there are no, or very few journalists and newspapers that can take a stand. Columns will be written on why the government was forced to take the drastic measures and how soon this is going to get over. They’ll tell you it’s not as bad as it sounds. Most TV news channels are already nationalized by proxy but then there will be total control. Debates and talks shows will totally be tailored (OK, nothing is basically different even presently) to brainwash the public’s mind. People having opposing views will be either ignored or shouted down (and later on persecuted).
• There will be very little resistance from the opposition parties accept for half-hearted protests, public arrests and confused, senseless statements.
• The sense of outrage will be negligible: the educated and well-placed people are too timid, clueless and self-absorbed, and the poor are too weak and demotivated because they cannot buy food to eat. People will disappear and appear dead right left and center and nobody will ask a question. In fact the bodies that’ll be dumped on the road will be made into roadkill (it happens you know?).
• People will more or less remain to themselves.
• The crackdown on protestors will be severe as there are more criminals in the public life than there were back in 1975.

So am I predicting a no-way-out situation if emergency is reimposed? Looking at the current socio-psychological patterns I’d say yes. I’m not an expert, so of course I might be totally wrong.

Many theaters in Pune and Bombay (Mumbai) had to take down the recently released Karan Johar produced film Wake up, Sid when some MSN (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) stopped its screening for using Bombay instead of Mumbai. Bombay was changed to Mumbai back in 1996. Before the British the city was called Mumbai.

Before proceeding further, please give your opinion on this issue using the poll given below.

Many, including Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, has said that Karan Johar shouldn’t have apologized to Raj Thakery and given in to his gundaraj. I feel he did the right thing. So much is at stake when you make and release a film. The problem in our country is that you will find people a-dime-a-dozen who will tell you what you should do and shouldn’t, but when it actually comes to standing by your side and taking on the onslaught they conveniently disappear.

The thing is, you can either be a crusader or an entrepreneur. For Johar, they can shove the name up their asses as long as they let him run his movie. It’s like being mugged in a dark alley (actually our entire country is becoming like a dark alley); you don’t confront the gang of muggers or try to talk sense into them. You simply hand over to them whatever you have and move in with life. Losing your life over small things is not worth it. People like Raj Thakery and his goons are like those muggers. If they are happy with a paltry apology, big deal, you shouldn’t lose your sleep over it. Give it to them and move on. People won’t even remember this after a few days.

But then, you may ask, doesn’t it encourage them to commit further mischief? Yes. Too bad. We ourselves have made our society like this by continuously choosing wrong governments election after election. Raj Thakery and such are socio-legal problems and they have to be dealt at the police and political level. You cannot expect (and shouldn’t) Karan Johar to leave everything and start a campaign against Raj Thakery just to prove a point. All he wants to do is make films and earn profits, which is quite a legitimate aspiration. Instead of urging him to stand up to Raj Thakery and his goons, people themselves should organize a campaign and show Raj Thakery his true place.

It all started with this innocuous exchange between Kanchan Gupta, a prominent columnist who writes for the Pioneer, and Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, an avid Twitter user and the current media blue-eyed boy (my wife’s expression).

One tweet and from a media darling he has become a pariah, and this was bound to happen, and I wonder why he, or anybody else for that matter, never saw it coming (I’ll explain later). And the most appalling aspect of all this is, "cattle class" wasn’t even his expression, he was simply replying to Kanchan Gupta’s tweet: it was a simple exchange between two individuals that was blown out of proportion by the media as well as politicians. Go through various online links of newspapers and TV channels and nobody mentions even once that the expression did not originate from him.

Of course this could be because of the fact that unless you use some extra Twitter tools or a JavaScript addon you cannot see the tweet he had replied to. But before jumping the gun, at least the media dudes should have checked the entire chain of the tweet exchange.

About cattle class, 60 years of Congress governance has made sure that a majority of Indian citizens live like cattle. May be the expression touches a sore spot. May be the party has a ghost of a conscience by a freak chance.

Anyway, back to why they should have seen it coming. The days of individual politicians have gone. Most political parties in India thrive on the halos created around particular families and individuals, and all other members have to operate from under their shadow. Just look what happened to Jaswant Singh. After writing the book, he became an individual and moved outside of the shadow.

Similarly, the Congress party workers have to work within the shadow boundary of the Gandhi family. By using Twitter, by articulating his thoughts, by directly interacting with the common folks Tharoor is building his own mass base — people have begun to adore him and perhaps in the process, have begun to neglect the other blue-eyed boy, Rahul G. Now how can this be tolerated in a party where sycophancy is religion and the 3 Gandhis at the helm are no less than gods?

So in the guise of austerity and an abstract tweet, he is being targeted by his own party men and women, and soon they will be competing with each other just to show how loyal they are to the real blue-eyed trinity.

According to his latest tweets Shashi Tharoor has apologized, and in a country where words and rhetoric matter more than reality, he has done the right thing. Ours is a strange country. Speak truth and people will lunge at your throat; feed them with pleasant lies and they will fall on your feet.

Personally, I don’t feel so. If gods can be questioned, why not Mahatma Gandhi, who was a human after all, with copious human follies? Of course you can say of all people how come Mayawati speaks from a moral high ground? After all she’s an opportunistic, corrupt politicians who has done zilch for the Dalits aside from providing them vicarious pleasures by wallowing in obscene and hedonistic opulence and indulging in toothless saber-rattling.

Nonetheless, the Congress doesn’t have copyright over the name Mahatma and doesn’t automatically become the aggrieved party if somebody criticizes him. So she should specially not apologize just because the Congress has demanded the apology.

This Huffington Post article hints that since the local Iranian policemen wouldn’t attack their countrymen and women brutally and ruthlessly enough to suppress the uprising in favor of a liberal politician, the present Iranian government lead by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has invited Hezbollah members who might be Lebanese Arabs. I wanted to post this link on Twitter but it seems to be down right now.

Updates on Reddit reiterate this too.

With live blogging, Facebook and Twitter it is continuously becoming difficult for authoritarian regimes to clamp down on the outflow of information, as is amply evident during the current protests in Iran. See more photographs here and here.

Rather than subscribing to such views, I’d like to agree with such ones. Many so-called BJP-sympathizers feel BJP lost because it went soft on its Hindutva plank. BJP lost because it couldn’t communicate properly that it’s going soft on its Hindutva plank. It needs to tackle the media and the intelligentsia that is always busy maligning BJP’s image. Not that they have to try too hard, given the kind of illuminories it is often, shockingly, found supporting. Instead of heeding to the fear mongers the BJP must deliver what the Congress keeps promising election after election.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is sad that the Congress is back in power, there is an inexplicable tinge of relief that it isn’t the BJP, considering the kind of politics it’s been indulging in. A greater relief is the country has been spared from the scourge of the Left.

My political preference has been the BJP for long because I deeply despise the Congress and most of the other parties make me cringe, not because I’m a big fan of how the BJP conducts itself. I doubt if the BJP is going to learn some lessons from the current defeat, but here a few suggestions that I think can brighten up its prospects in 10 years.

Confront the Congress with the right facts

The BJP somehow never leverages the scores of anti-national activities the Congress constantly pursues. Take for instance the Gujarat riots and Babari Masjid demolition. The mainstream media and the so-called secular parties never tire of raising these issues whenever they want to corner the BJP. I don’t mean to justify the riots and the demolitions (they could both have been prevented had there been a will and foresight), but does the current generation know that most of the riots in the country have happened under the Congress rule? After all it was Rajiv Gandhi who first unlocked the temple and performed pooja (prayer) there.

Why cannot the BJP prepare a list of the various riots that have been sponsored by the Congress and how many people have died so far in those riots, from various communities? What about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in which more than 4,000 innocent Sikhs were butchered by the Congress goons? Thousands of people lost their lives during the reign of terror in Punjab and all this happened because Indira Gandhi sent a bogeyman (Bhindrawale) to divide the Akalis.

Major Hindu-Muslim riots in places like Aligarh, Ahmedabad, Jamshedpur, Meerut, Bhagalpur and other places happened when it was the Congress government.

For almost 50 years the Congress has ruled the country. In terms of poverty and misery the country competes with sub-Saharan countries. The disparities are phenomenal: the poorest and richest can be found in the same locality. In terms of corruption the country is tagged as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Lawlessness is the norm of the day; women are kidnapped even from crowded markets. Terrorists can attack in the hearts of our cities at any given time. It’s your criminal record that makes you a worthy politician and not your social performance. The very nature of the way Congress operates pushes people towards misery and poverty.

The reason why the country got a breather was because for a small duration Narsimha Rao came to power and unlike Manmohan Singh he was not a puppet of the Nehru-family.

There are two types of people who vote for the Congress and its supportive parties: people who are not aware of where the country is going and people who don’t really care where the country is going as long as they can go on doing their usual business. The Congress prefers to maintain the status quo for obvious reasons.

Hate politics doesn’t give bigger dividends

I totally agree that “secularism” is a charade in our country and whenever you speak of Hindu suppression by Muslims and Christians you are branded as communal, but a majority of the population isn’t worried sick about these issues. They ARE live issues and they HAVE kept the country in doldrums for more than a millennium, but this is something that doesn’t hit you smack in the face in a few months. Poverty, corruption, infrastructure, health, education, law and order and justice do. People are more concerned about their jobs, rising prices, criminalization of politics, the international image of the country, terrorism and crime and social justice.

Speeches and campaigns against communities and individuals, justifiably, put people off and they definitely should, must. In our country there are multiple cultures and ideologies and minority bashing cannot take the BJP beyond a certain level, deservedly. The BJP should stop playing the same victimhood card the Muslims have been playing all over the world.

Get rid of political liabilities

Whether they accept it or not, people like Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi are liabilities, not assets, and they have directly or indirectly precipitated the downfall of the party. They are like those cricket players that focus on garnering runs for themselves without caring whether the team wins or not. Locally they may be successful, but to a larger portion of the population they are simply villains. Similarly the party should distance itself from disruptive organizations like the VHP etc. because their sole agenda is spreading a sense of insecurity in the society and without this they solve no other purpose. I am not saying that the BJP should try to appease somebody, but they are steps in the right direction in a country that has a long history of tolerance, acceptance and real secularism.

Develop a youthful image

Despite Manmohan Singh being old it was Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi who were constantly charming people. Most of its youth (or youthful) politicians were aggressively vociferous and present everywhere. The Congress portrayed itself as a youthful party ready to embrace change and represent the young India. The largest 20-something population resides in India and a majority of its members do not relate to what the BJP and its cadres represent. Beating up people during Valentine’s Day and attacking pubs is not the kind of environment that the youth of the country want to live in. The BJP and its various wings constantly seem to be living in a fear psychosis raising the dark clouds of cultural and religious invasions. They constantly feed the media with negative images and the media gleefully laps them up. The party should get rid of these smelly elements and encourage young politicians without shackling them with the chains of the Hindutva ideology. Instead it kept on defending the sorry excuse of a youthful representative like Varun Gandhi.

Do some work at the grassroots level instead of preaching all the time

Let’s face it, the Congress is a very old political party and it has its tentacles spread across the length and breadth of the country, whether it’s intelligentsia, bureaucracy, international lobbying, business and media. All TV news channels and major newspapers seem to be cohorts of the Congress. Any given day it can mobilize its millions of workers at the grassroots level and play its dirty politics.

The BJP also has the disadvantage of an extremely divided Hindu vote bank and this is not the problem when it comes to minorities. Christians, Muslims and marginalized Hindu communities consolidate the Congress vote bank. The BJP on the other hand lacks this reach and needs to work harder at achieving it. Instead of marginalizing minorities and disadvantaged communities the BJP should get all of them together to build a solid and dependable following. This can be achieved by working with the communities and helping people perform their day-to-day activities easily. The party must directly get involved with the people and issues that really make a difference. For instance, instead of opposing the loan waivers to farmers the party should closely work with the farmers so that they are able to pay back their loans. Similarly instead of targeting the Christians for converting Hindus they should work to alleviate their conditions so that there is no need to convert. Why always blame other communities and religions when your own religion doesn’t give dignity and protection to its people?

Develop parallel, vocal intelligentsia and media

The only intellectual in the party who is a bit vocal and cannot be shouted down easily is Arun Shourie. The rest sooner or later begin to sound like morons on various television debates. It is not completely their fault as most of the anchors make sure that the debate is eventually swayed in the favor of the Congress, or the Left, but still it is very difficult to cow down a person who knows his or her facts and believes in them.

Just have a cursory look at various articles published in the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Guardian; most all of them are perpetually bashing the so-called “communal and nationalistic” BJP and they don’t have a single word to say against the Congress or some other party in spite of the fact that the various versions of the Congress have been screwing the country for more than 50 years. The BJP is the favorite whipping boy and in fact it has become a fashion among the “writers” and “journalists” to blame the BJP for all the problems the country has. One article even blamed the Hindu nationalists for the formation of Pakistan because the Muslims felt insecure and marginalized because of them. How absurd can you get? But then where are the alternative voices?

The same goes for history and social sciences. Historians and social scientists with Congress affiliations have been twisting and distorting Indian history for ages and people complain that scholars with opposing or alternative views are not published and they don’t get the fundings to demolish the scholarly misconceptions. The greatest problem is that we are always going for shorter solutions and don’t aim for long-term goals. If Advani can have a gold rath (chariot) then a scholar should easily be able to get the funding he or she needs to publish his or her book. If Arun Shourie can get his books published, why cannot other scholars? The problem is not money, the problem is attitude. Hire the best scholars, hire the best PR agencies and create your own lobby groups in various countries and I am sure that the BJP can achieve that.

Parzania, the film that was made on Gujarat riots attained national and international exposure but Amu that was made on anti-Sikh riots of 1984 was snubbed by the Indian media. Why isn’t there a parallel force to promote such films and books?

Use the Internet to create evangelists

The Obama campaigners used the Internet to their great advantage and the IT wing of the BJP wanted to replicate the same feat, without replicating the needed hard work and sagacity. They literally spammed the entire Internet as far as the Indian demography was concerned. There was so much Advani on the Internet that even those who were ready to consider the BJP as a viable alternative decided to vote against the party. Instead they should have used social media to interact with people. They should have created online forums where voters could interact with top BJP leaders and directly ask questions. They should have written and distributed informative articles using various social bookmarking websites. They should have been the ones starting campaigns like “Jagore”. Even Amitabh Bachchan manages his blog better than the BJP campaigners. Not a big part of our population uses the Internet but in elections every single vote counts.

Hit the streets

I have worked with a few NGOs and have found that the best way to raise awareness is by organizing street plays. They should organize interactive street plays in which they can dispel the various myths that are propagated against it. Various party leaders and concerned citizens should get together and raise awareness. Plays and songs should be written to reveal the true colors of the Congress and the like-minded parties. During India’s independence struggle songs, plays and poems played an indisputably important role.

For the next 10 years the BJP should forget about elections and simply focus on building a party the people of the country can see a healthy alternative in. If it keeps struggling from one election to another it’s going to be impossible to come to power and bring about a positive change.