June 07, 2006

Gujarat has stopped producing leaders

Gujarat has stopped producing leaders – Don’t you feel so?

The last leader that I can remember from Gujarat is the same that no one from Gujarat want to associate with. His name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Ever heard of him? Well, see the postage stamps. The last democratic protest Gujarat had was Navnirman and it was four decades ago. As the state stopped producing leaders, the state stopped looking towards solutions. Instead of leaders, we have smart politicians today. The politicians are always biased. They have a basket called development. This basket is full of skeletons. Full of ghosts of those who died silently waiting for their rehabilitation or as urban slum dwellers. The politicians opened this basket far too often and automatically it started producing wealth and created millionaires. As more Nirmas and Reliance mushroomed in the state, more people became refugees. On the road to prosperity, you have no solutions. You crush whoever comes your way and the state will help you in doing that. Whenever a helpless poor shed tears, the politicians opened the same basket again and again. Whenever an influential shed tears, the courts came to their rescue. The oppressed stood dumb looking for a leader but he never turned up because there was none.

And this is exactly the reason the BJP rebellion in Gujarat died before it could germinate. Mistake – Keshubhai thought he was a leader. It is the same reason Congress is orphaned. Mistake – Too many crooks disguised as leaders. It is the same reason the Left parties are part of history in Gujarat. Mistake – They became number one enemy for the basket holders.
Leave the political field for a little while and enter the NGO sector. They too have a basket where they create nothing but wealth. In order to do that, they have to be at loggerheads with the government. If you are against the government you earn. If you are with the government, you still earn. Not a single NGO can gather a thousand people to a rally without arranging for logistics. The people have lost faith in all the system. They come only when they are transported. So here too leaders are hard to come by.
Now pause a little while we go through theatre scene. Ooops, are there anyone in this field? Anyone who have enacted a political play on the stage that evoked good applause?
Now let’s come back to the political scene. There is not a single person to counter the series of misinformation campaign unleashed as far as Narmada is concerned. I wonder how Aamir Khan has hurt the feelings of the people of Gujarat by speaking for Gujaratis? How is that the people from the valley who are going to type Cntl+Z in their life not a Gujarati? I remember the elections campaigns in these tribal areas where the same party – BJP – asked these tribals to oust missionaries from the region because ‘you all are our brothers and sisters’. That was the reason the BJP did well in Central Gujarat in the last assembly elections. That is the reason they could easily put the tribal to fight against the Muslims in these areas. No body dared to ask how suddenly they have become orphans. If they are not Gujaratis, they are not from any other neighboring state as well. Where do they belong to? I pity the tribal leaders who have not questioned this logic. They have been staying in the valley for centuries. Civilized people created provinces and divided them into different states without taking their consent. They didn’t protest. The civilized people created a new government department called Forest Department and cleaned up the forest wood which they had preserved and worshipped for centuries. They didn’t protest. The civilized people created cities and to have water right upto the asshole, they created dams and asked them to vacate without giving any notice. They didn’t protest. Now somebody like Aamir Khan said a word in support of these helpless refugees, there are protests everywhere.
Because there was blood shed during partition and we have a Kashmir problem burning, there is a cruel logic when people like Pravin Togadia thundering that Muslims should got to Pakistan. Because the majority of the nations in the world are Christian dominated, I can understand the logic of the same guy asking the Christians to go to either the US or the UK. (It is a different story altogether that he withdrew the statement immediately and as to who are desperate to go to these places). But how can you uproot a tribal on whose land you and me are staying by preparing some paper documents? How are they not as loyal to the state as you and me? Is it because they are demanding the basic livelihood needs in lieu of their ouster?
You made them refugees by vacating them from their land. You made them orphans now by disowning them. Is there any leader who can help them? Is there any one please who can give them a state because they don’t belong to any state? Is there any one who can at least report in the media how they are living away from the land they owned and preserved? Any one please.

Binu Alex

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