A sad day for India, Lalu a convicted Politician wins

To me, the outcome of the Bihar Elections has been both discordant and grating. I am disheartened although not dismayed, as the outcome was a highly probable one. Nitish- Lalu combine had ensured vote portability. A large majority seeking development voted for Nitish, and the more parochial ones voted for Lalu. I would actually have been very pleasantly surprised if the MGB, the grand alliance, so skilfully coalesced by Nitish Kumar would have lost. That would have signalled perhaps a good departure from caste based politics to clean politics. Of course the question then would be, is BJP clean, and the answer is no.

The word communal has, due to protracted overuse by various political parties particularly the Congress, to brand the right brigade has acquired a pejorative connotation, but actually communalism is the back bone of democratic processes. A democracy is all about issues of the a community or commune, which does not mean a disperse religious group. 

Electorates world over are wise, because collective wisdom is better than individual. But it is distraughtly when collective wisdom glosses over anomalies and legitimises criminality making a travesty of a judicial system.

The latest example is Lalu Prasad Yadav leading the MGB to a landslide victory, despite the fact that he is convicted in the Fodder Scam case and was actually on bail while he was addressing rallies.

THE REAL REASON

At IIT Kanpur, I had a Prof of Sociology, whose father in Law had been the President of India. The latter having the reputation of scholarliness, I once asked my Prof if he was in awe of not the rank - as I knew he would never be - but the scholarliness of his Father in Law.  “Just a mediocre scholar” is how he referred to his father in law, purely in his objective assessment and not out of any prejudice or disregard for the person.

That is when I learnt the term ‘mediocre scholar’. I think, all academics returning their awards are merely mediocre scholars. How can you possibly return that you have already enjoyed for so long. Something that is just a belated recognition of your erudition or contribution to society as the case may be. If this was given by a King, you could perhaps return it, but given by a democratically elected government means, it is recognition given by the people. You could perhaps return the monetary prize which ironically most scholars are not returning. 

We mostly fail to identify the root cause of the problem. All this has been triggered by the Dadri incident. I don’t understand how this incident is different from a murder of a person on the suspicion that he has stolen the neighbours hen or buffalo. I know, in villages, stealing buffaloes is not uncommon, and often leads to murders. How is Dadri different from a murder or lynching of a person who has protested on his land being encroached by a local ganglord, or, in a more urbane setting, not served a drink after closing hours of the bar, or how is this different from killing for wrong parking of a car? How is Dadri more intolerant than killing of an RTI activist for demanding information that he is entitled to by law? What provokes such reaction from the literati today? Is it triggered by a notion of elitism……

Why were awards not returned by after Godhra or Taj Bombing or the mutilation of the bodies of soldiers by Pak forces.

Have such incidents after a communal flare up never happened in India? Have such incidents never happened in any other country? Is there some government that can guarantee that it can completely curb such betrayal of human values and prevent any such madness from happening during their regimes.

What are the two issues that need to be dealt at this point of time :

1.Why do such incidents happen?

2.What is the trigger for this hue and cry now and award returning wave?

Such incidents happen, because there is a general belief in the people that there is a weak rule of law in the country regardless of the government that is in power. One can get away with impunity, should one have numbers with him. The law will be slow if not subservient to them if they have some numbers, political power or pelf backing them. In a democracy, numbers always give legitimacy to the most irrational of demands.

The trigger for the hue and cry is not the sudden deterioration of the situation. It is the silence of a PM who is otherwise so verbose that he is always talking. Earlier there was a PM who was not only dumb but docile. Now we have one, who misses not one occasion to proclaim that he is a braveheart. But his silence too may also not be without reason and may be calibrated to play to a particular constituency. And I think all protests are for that silence.