There was a time when the Taj Group of hotels was the pride of the hospitality industry in India. But over the last decade the deterioration has been sharp and sad. In Delhi the group manages the Ambassador hotel in the famed Lutyen?s zone of the capital, a prize location. The building is an excellent example of the same genre of design and architecture that New Delhi was built on and anywhere else in the world, this kind of hotel would have been a carefully conserved heritage property. Alas, not in this country.
The hotel sits at the head of a residential quadrangle, around a square park. It is a quiet and privileged locale. Instead of creating a super deluxe Lutyenesque hotel with replicas of the original style of furniture and design, it has become a rather low grade puppy kind of place that hosts all manner of loud weddings in the lawn outside, disturbing the residents with speakers blaring through the night, well beyond the time limit permissible, driving all civilised people totally bananas. The management could not care less and pay no attention to any complaint and when the cops ask them to stop, they do what is expected of them! The same lot of people would never dare to behave the way they do here, anywhere else in the world.
Carrying the ?Taj? brand into the depths of crass and tasteless service of this kind, breaking civic rules in a special area of the capital, the Ambassador Hotel epitomises the rather painful deviation from good sense and a hitherto great brand.
Destroying civilised norms and ethics, turning a blind eye to all that is rotten, taking the law into your own hands…all this has brought India to where we are. We all see it, we bemoan it but equally we add to it and participate in the slide down by joining the band and by doing selfishly for oneself and one?s profit. We forget that we are at that fragile threshold…we may break and lose it all. The world has moved ahead…we have regressed. We have regressed in every sphere.
Rather than be impassioned and energised by change and growth, our passions get diverted into condoning and enhancing communal and political disorder, our energies go in trying to keep out the new and innovative, we fight change, we never fight corruption, we use our brains to self-destruct. This syndrome is the India Syndrome, a disease that has eaten into our vitals. The privileged fiddle as India burns. Political patronage has killed initiative and the administrative machinery has throttled honesty, growth and a transparent positive entrepreneurial spirit.
There is no leader on the political landscape who has the wherewithal, be it intellectual or sheer will, to combat this illness. The people of this country, rich and poor, are desperately looking for this catalyst. It is an open maidan…but where is the messiah?
The final result of the Gujarat elections are scheduled to come in Sunday, the fifteenth. There is much hype in the air. Those who were staunch supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine are today bad-mouthing them in the living rooms of Delhi, wanting them to lose. Those who attacked Sonia Gandhi mercilessly are today hailing her political and leadership qualities, hoping the Congress will win. These are the ironies of history, but they also show the ficklemindedness of the so-called elite.
Neither of the two opposing factors have been any different from what they are today. The BJP is what it always was and Sonia Gandhi is what she has always been. Because she was quiet and did not reveal her hand and mind, should not have warranted the reaction she got from the city slickers. Let us not forget that she speaks Hindi and Deve Gowda does not!
I have often wondered why the opposition to the Congress has been so vociferous in their attack on Sonia Gandhi, what makes them so fearful and insecure about her leadership? Clearly, she is a force to reckon with otherwise they would have ignored her, much like the national press did till recently…till ironically, India Today did the cover story that hailed her as the future. Clearly, she is on a winning wicket. The voice of the BJP leaders is becoming high pitched, shaky and shrill.