If you have an opportunity to disappear and disconnect for a short while from the horrors that are pitched onto the pages of our newspapers and small screens, revealing all the grimness of our failed governance and corroded values, and enter the kingdom of the tiger, wander for hours and days through the forest absorbing the sounds and the stillness, the calm and the discipline, you will understand how dignified and orderly the real jungle is when compared to India?s urban jungle.
Little remains of our forests, most of which have been mutilated and ravaged by us humans for greed of different kinds that range from the collection of timber to the garnering of votes. Coming back to New Delhi after a week in a Rajasthan forest was like being jolted into the reality and danger of entering a rule-less free for all where meaningless killings as well as venomous verbal assaults were far more scary than anything in the jungle.
The sanctity of our Parliament and state assemblies, where elected men and women are honoured and privileged to represent India, has been damaged. They attack each other, spewing venom instead of speaking to each other, using verbal weapons that are every bit as vicious as poisoned battleaxes that get interred far sooner, and sometimes even descend to physical assaults, hurling furniture at each other in a chamber that was conceived as a space for debate, discourse and an exchange of ideas, and for policy initiatives to enable this fledgling nation state to emerge with confidence and adopt the path of development, abiding by the tenets that govern a plural and multilayered country.
The forests of India are a haven in comparison with the hell that we in the cities of this country have to endure. They are the lungs of India and need to be conserved and protected. More tracts need to be added. Degraded lands have to be restored and nurtured. Manmade desertification needs to be stopped. India needs to think of ?growth? in broader terms.
The young are appalled by the insanity of utterly shallow debates in Parliament. They have had enough of the baseless rhetoric and corrupt practices that have disabled India and reduced the country to dangerous levels of militant and criminal anarchy. Transparency in governance is the demand today. Political and administrative interventions in national public institutions, based on the personal whims of elected rulers who easily don the garb of demonic dictators, are no longer acceptable to most citizens.
The ridiculous charade playing out on the Nuclear Deal has made a mockery of the true definition of ?nationalism?. These old and dissipated men and women who are opposing change and challenges, people with archaic ideas and ideologies dead and gone, need to let India grow and develop, led by a new generation and the freshness of an all-embracing openness that will accept when appropriate and reject when necessary all international and other interventions based on the needs and aspirations of changing times. The new generation needs to dream a new dream, take risks, make their mistakes, rise from them and bring into being an active and energised India.
As we head towards the elections in Gujarat, the rumblings from the ground are that the Congress has reinvented itself and there is a green light gaining voltage strength for the party. New faces. New alignments. Is the political status quo in that state beginning to change?
The bombardment by large adverts of a Resurgent Rajasthan, a Madhya Pradesh on the March and a fast developing Gujarat, is much like the erstwhile ?India Shining? campaign. D?j? vu. Often, it is this isolated and smug representation of those chief ministers having ?done well?, looking down at the janata from their ivory towers encircled by security and red lights that send out negative signals, that is so telling. These are people who assert themselves through loud utterances rather than real action.
Have these so-called ?leaders? lost touch with Indian civilisation?
