However, there’s a lot to be said about the churlish back-and-forth going on via social media, and my Facebook feed is filled with emotional and personal arguments about whom to vote for. Those who vote for Modi are yelled at for being immoral, AAP supporters are supposedly immature and there’s (thank God) no RaGa supporter touting the fact publicly.
And my responses to all of the above are too long to go on a comment thread or a status. So here I go, for all you care.
The ups and downs of:
1. NaMo:
If you vote for this man, you are not necessarily immoral. Voting for him is neither sufficient nor necessary to prove you immoral. Whether or not he is guilty of the 2002 riots (mostly, he is). Here I answer the point this man, who spoke to a dying city in 2012, raises. He claims, Indians should draw a moral line and abstain from voting for NaMo if you think he is guilty of 2002.
But then, that’s every PM we’ve had since 1947. Our first Prime Minister holds the record for being the worst murderer India has seen. No other riot has seen a genocide as big as the genocide of the 1947 partitions in erstwhile India. People across religions have been slaughtered on trains, buses, streets. Families have been ruined for generations, in refugee camps and barren lands. Fortunes have changed. Kashmir has been destroyed and ruined forever. Yet, this man remains iconic both in India and the world for giving a human face to India’s tryst with destiny. I find it hard to believe that we could not have been one big nation with Nehru as the PM and Jinnah as the President. We CELEBRATE his birthday as children’s day. Here’s to hoping all our kids are serial killers and genocide makers like him. What did Modi do? If Tytler goes free for 1984, if Arun Shourie can go free for anti-Bengali genocide creations and get a Magsaysay Award for it, how does it matter if Modi comes to power? We’ve drawn those moral lines decades ago. There are no new lines to draw.
The downside? Know that thou shalt be ruled with the iron fist. People with open minds and ideas of freedom can say good bye to everything they hold dear. Because when Modi is PM, you won’t be entitled to your own opinion anymore. Not that you are anyway. You are still feeding on politicized media propaganda. You will continue to see that as long as corporations dump their cash on Modi. He has Birla, Reliance backing him. Most media channels are with him this time.
If you’re a woman, well, learn to be a good one. Modi will make sure love and romance are his business, not your individual business. He will decree that you must not employ a woman in jobs that keep you out lkate and hence he will improve law and order. For, if women don’t leave the house, how can they be assaulted? And of course, marital rape and abuse are matters of the family. Be a woman and don’t wash your dirty laundry in public.
He will censor everything on your Facebook and Twitter … in short, he will make India a better, cultured, right-wing China. Woo-hoo!
2. RaGa: Really? You want me to dignify that with real estate on my blog? IF you choose to vote for him, all you will see is a moderately handsome 44-year-old face on TV chanting about women empowerment .. and what was that other thing? Nvm. I was just staring at his pretty face. Also, too old for me. Plus he has Bofors hanging on his head. Or his mother’s head. Such a mamma’s boy. Yikes.
3. AK-49: That was a great one! AK-49.
If you’re voting for him, you are doing so for the right reasons. You perceive yourself a victim of the system, you think you are moral, you think you are secular and you want to stand up for what is right and vote. Upside? You think you did the right thing. The man is an idealist. He wants to provide an alternative when he knows the public will lap it up. He is a great businessman. See, the market is ripe for change. He has inexperience on his side, because he is ready to bring in radical changes. He is a man of action and he takes responsibilities for goof ups.
Downside?
NONE of us are idealists in life. Have you quit a job because you thought nepotism was unethical? Have you ever chosen to send your child to a KV because a private school was asking for a huge donation? Have you ever tried to give a grocer his asked price on vegetables and not haggled? Have you never cheated on taxes? If you answered yes to these, you’ve probably earned the right to vote for AAP. Otherwise, you aren’t the aam aadmi AK is talking about. Most of us like to believe we are awesome and upstanding citizens. We are NOT. We have all slipped occasionally.
Realistically, corruption is not our problem. Corrupt people are. The IAS and IPS officers are. Do away with bureaucracy and India will be happy. But that’s not what he’s asking of us. He makes corruption sound like a politician problem. But it’s not. Every politician in the WORLD today is corrupt. You will remain a 49-day CM if you don’t get into the game. It’s called politics for a reason. It is the only position where lobbying, nepotism and corporate backing are legitimized and ethical, let’s stop pretending that they are not, AK.
You want to make the country less corrupt, let’s crack down on the people. Really. There is a hierarchy.
A politician will never be Aam Aadmi (or a common man).
Then, there is foreign policy. While you fix internal corruption, what is happening to the rest of the world? Freeze. Freeze, I say. I have no clue about his external affairs manifesto. And I don’t care if you give Kashmir away to save lives, but tell me how you’re going to get others to agree? Like those on the other side of the border?
So, are you voting?
I’m not. But if you are, remember, AAP can be the troublemakers in the Parliament (which would be awesome) and NaMo could possibly make a good PM. RaGa, idk.
Anwesha Bhattacharjee 