NavDharmyug

  "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit realities to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it."                        - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism As Delhi descends into the breathless chamber of smoke and dust another year, Delhi CM releases another tranche of full-page advertisements, and some would say, using them, buys the headlines of the newspapers in which those advertisements appear. The air quality hovers between bad and worse, as the silly anti-Deepavali order of Supreme Courts mock the powers-that-be, as Deepawali still is a month ahead. When I looked at the Hindustan Times today (NCR Edition, 18.10,2020), I am reminded of the above quote by Hannah Arendt.  An unscrupulous politician like Arvind Kejriwal is defined in the quote above, a politician who sto...

Sometimes truth is so simple that it escapes the eyes of the clever. Clever people are naturally inclined to search the subtle, to investigate the infinite. Unfortunately they oftentimes end up being victim of their own ability. This we saw in wise people declaring 98 percent and no less possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming the US president. Closer home, we saw the wise predicting the same in UP, in Punjab and in Goa. The municipal elections of Delhi have concluded and the results are out. The results of the election are as under: Total seats contested: 279 The tally Party-wise is: BJP: 181 AAP: 48 Congress: 30 Others: 20 To be honest, past MCDs ruled by BJP have dismal record of performance with ghost employees, ghost schemes and absolutely disheartening corruption. The common sense and sense of the wise political analysts predicted rout for BJP and either a spectacular victory for Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party or a return of Congress. The results have amazed ...

A man walks into metro station, shoot himself. The story is a footnote on some inside pages of the newspaper. Even if someone reads it, it is security lapse which stands out. The dead doesn’t evoke attention, let alone sympathy. Without personalization, it is a lame news. I am not a journalist. I am not even a student of journalism in proper sense. If I go by the wise words by Anne Lamott , and analyze the reports, the intent and interest of the journalist stands open for scrutiny. A murder in Dadri, sad as it is, outcome of rumor or fact, is reported way differently from the way, the gory murder of a reporter in same state or killing of a soldier in same state is reported. Annie Lamott tells us that we need to be presented with the actors in a story with human perspective, that what they were as human beings, beyond a statistics or a name. We know the man murdered in Dadri was doing errands for the village, a soft-spoken man, who, with hard work did well to place his kids in...

See I Fooled You Source: MSN In a time of universal deceit- telling the truth is a revolutionary act.- George Orwell.  A dream rose from desperation. Hassled by blatant corruption, Indians rose in protest against a thoroughly corrupt government which largely laughed off those protest. Those in power were not concerned, worried. They were amused, they laughed it off, they asked the people who questioned corruption in embarrassed, scared voices- “Are you nuts?” Then, suddenly it was Y2k or Java or Cloud to use a technology equivalent. Everyone was doing it and no one knew what it meant. Technology democratized the media and the Social media split into two. It did do something good. It churned the politics and challenged the status quo. It broke the collaboration of convenience among the top two national parties. Narendra Modi was brought in as change of guard for BJP. Many called it attempt to polarize. I do not look at it that way. It was an attempt to offer what peopl...

I have long cherished and celiberated my politically neutral position as a proclaimed mugwump. However, the way political world around me moved with a speed so unusual in Indian world of homeopathic revolutions, only way to maintain sanity in a rare fast-changing scenario which moved from Congress to AAP to BJP was to get on the bus whisking past. So I did and vote this time, not hiding behind missing entry of voting list or the NOTA, which is nothing but a self-satisfying absurdity, since with or without NOTA, the one with highest votes in rest of it will win the seat anyways. The world around me was seething with anger, and I perhaps, augmented that fury with mine, even more feral then that of the world around. A lot many Pundits term this election as a referendum on corruption. That reading isn't entirely correct. Many things happened in last few years. We Indians, to a great degree have, over the centuries reconciled ourselves with the idea of divine rule, however ...

I will here not evaluate the veracity of claims and counter-claims by AAP and its opponents, which are as on day listed as Congress and BJP, both colossal forces, one driven by history, another by a promise of future. The election surveys are a different game altogether and true or not, do not honestly analyses the impact of a political force. AAP rose out of the desperation of the middle class, driven to the edge by blatant corruption and a response to it by the government of the day which grew even more blatant with each new expose. Nothing was left sacred and nothing was left untouched. The shame grew to engulf the highest citadels of power, which sat in the assumed security. That power corrupts, we knew as a nation and to an extent, we had given a realistic acceptance to corruption in governance. In that sense, I believe, we Indians bore a great resemblance to Irishman, as written about by GK Chesterton, has two eyes. By which he implied that with one eye “ an Irishman saw ...

I have been of late pretty particular about posting one post every week, if I could get enough time and enough emotions pushing me towards it. There are some weeks like this one which had multiple thoughts nudging against each other. There were some truly political thoughts, political events which were quite disturbing and distressing. Communal riots in a part of country and a reaction by the government of the state, lacking any conviction. This is the same government which had sacked an IAS officer merely for following Supreme Court guidelines (the latest input on the same is that the lady in question has been re-instated, ostensibly on rendering apology to the CM) on account of creating communal tension thereby. The space left vacant by the legit government of the day was duly occupied by forces which made the environment conducive for communal disharmony. Debates spread over the media and cacophonous  monologues, totally immune of the human loss spread across social ...