Finally, the elections in India are over -- after such a long wait. In general, living away from India seems to give one a good sense of optimism, that things in India will change for the better. You don't experience some of the problems that one can encounter everyday, while fantasizing that some of these problems can indeed go away. You are also more and more emotionally attached to the country, remembering mostly the nice things back home. One is also extremely motivated to do whatever you possibly can, at least morally supporting the great things happening while expressing disgust at the negative events. It has been three and half years since we have been living abroad, and this period has been extremely busy politically in the country -- and I have followed as much as I could about the happenings in the country. This was also the period where my political thoughts have gone to all kinds of places, being influenced by numerous sources. I try to recollect this journey in this note, while giving background of my political inclinations prior to this period.
In 2009, UPA was reelected with a bigger mandate than in the 2004 elections, and in a way I did not have a strong opinion against the incumbent government. It was functioning as governments in India usually function, maintaining status-quo on controversial issues while making slow progress with massive social welfare schemes. However, it was a bit upsetting the way our PM was remote controlled by Mrs. Gandhi, but he indeed showed some courage by standing by the nuclear deal with the US. The massive farm loan waiver was depressing, but it seemed to work wonders for the congress party in the elections. I must confess that before 2004, I had been a fan of the Vajpayee government, and even in 2009 I had retained my affiliation and had hoped BJP will come back in the centre to fast track India's development story as they had done from 1999 to 2004. In fact, I had voted for BJP in 2009 in my constituency where BJP had not even the minute chances. Of course, my wife was a BJP fan too and so were, fortunately, on the same page there.
In 2010, I didn't think much politically except a yoga camp that I and my wife attended. It was the yoga camp of Baba Ramdev where we went to get motivated with doing some yoga. However, in the camp, Ramdev kept giving a political message in between our bouts of Pranayam. He was basically talking of getting rid of corrupt politicians from the country, and supporting honest ones. My political idol, Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan of Lok Satta, was also there during the yoga sessions and he emphasized this aspect. Ramdev also talked about launching a movement (Bharat Swabhiman Andolan) to promote honest politicians and to get back the illegal tax money stashed in banks abroad. All this was music to the ears, and listening to it at 5am in the morning in the open ground surrounded by people with great intentions doing yoga was immensely rejuvenating. On a different note, 2010 was also the year of scams, the commonwealth games scam, and the mega 2G spectrum scam among others.
In 2011, we arrived in France, and it was also a time when we started using social media (facebook) more often than before. It was when for the first time, we experienced something that could resemble a revolution. There was predominantly a particular kind of message on facebook those days, all which was in support of Anna Hazare's fast for bringing Lokpal bill in parliament. It was a tsunami of sorts, and I started doing research like many others about who was Anna, what was Jan-Lokpal bill (Anna's version of Lokpal) about, what was the organization India-Against-Corruption and who were the members etc. Like lakhs of Indians, I felt that the government should quickly pass the bill that has been pending since decades, and the bill that has been deliberately killed everytime it comes for discussion in the parliament. So, I did all the 'likes' I could do on facebook, and re-posted lots of relevant messages. This was also when one of our friends, Hemant, decided to organize a protest in Grenoble in support of the Lokpal movement. So, on one fine day, 20 Indians in Grenoble assembled, made a few banners with catchy phrases, marched to a park in Meylan, and sat there on a dharna. Hemant recorded a video with each of us expressing their frustrations, which Hemant planned to send to someone as the show of support from Grenoble. It was a moment of pride for us, for being able to support something good for the country. Anna's fast finally ended when the government agreed to form a committee to draft the bill with half the members from the civil society. Anna's fast was followed by Baba Ramdev's fast, possibly for his parallel movement against corruption to stay relevant. His fast ended a bit dramatically, and I was not greatly impressed by the statements that Baba Ramdev made such as 'the government conspired to kill me' etc.
The rest of the year 2011 passed with government showing that it was shameless. Many deadlines were set and broken. Government, instead of bringing a strong anti-corruption bill tried to discredit the movement as well as the character of Anna Hazare. It was so clear, that I felt extremely frustrated. Anna pushed the government to bring the bill in a couple more times by fasting, but government did nothing. All that the government tried to do was to kill the movement and not take the demands for Jan Lokpal Bill seriously. Their confidence was so amazingly high that they felt that this movement that enjoyed such public support can also be killed by procrastinating, and trying to discredit members for unrelated reasons. It was so frustrating seeing what the Indian government and our elected representatives were doing. It was funny when the ruling party at one time remarked that the movement was possibly a conspiracy from abroad. Finally, under pressure, a weak Lokpal bill was introduced in the parliament which passed through one house but not the other, given some well planned strategy of the legislators. The year ended by Anna resolving to campaign against the ruling party in the elections, and to enlighten the stubborn government that public opinion was definitely against it. This came partially true when in a by-election where Anna campaigned against Congress party, it came a distant third.
In 2012, as expected nothing much happened with the anti corruption bill while Team Anna and the nation kept waiting. Team Anna released a list of ministers who were blocking the bill. And, he again sat on a fast when the government refused to set up an enquiry. Government was more stubborn even against such a definite public opinion, and realizing this, Anna and his team quit talking to the government. For me, this was significant as I had lost hope with the Anna movement, and my focus like many others shifted to the strategy of Kejriwal. Kejriwal, one of the members of team Anna had started a political party, AAP, to take the anti-corruption fight to the polling booths. I was excited but thought it won't make much difference. What was also exciting were the continuous press conferences that Kejriwal and team gave to make allegations against people with apparent documentary proofs. The most interesting one was on Robert Vadra's land deals. The BJP was joining the chorus of these allegations, and it seemed they were helping BJP till Kejriwal laid allegation on Nitin Gadkari. Consequently, Gadkari had to step down as BJP president. It was an amazing period, as it appeared that things were changing for the best in India. This was also a time when I had lost a bit of faith in the BJP because of their continuous parliament interruptions. I was becoming more and more a fan of AAP, and would have become more so like Amit and other friends unless I was pulled out it by Anil. 2012 was also the year of Satyamev Jayate by Aamir Khan. It was the only show for which we waited eagerly to appear on Youtube every Sunday.
In 2012 and a good portion of 2013, I used to go for lunch with Anil and Markos. Anil was a pakka Congress and Kejriwal hater. Hating congress was obvious but not the one directed towards Kejriwal at first. For Anil, AAP was a party of leftists who were incapable of improving conditions in India. A few among them were also anti-nationalists such as Prashanth Bhushan who advocated referendum in Kashmir, and they were apparently being funded heavily by external agencies such as the Ford foundation which made their intent suspicious. Anil was also instrumental in initiating my perception change towards Modi. At one point of time, I used to be pretty much anti-Modi. This was a natural outcome of the negative air against him in the media. I had also even read a portion of a book in the library that spewed venom on Modi. In fact, once upon a time, I had debated intensely with my wife Shilpi about Modi back in 2008 justifying the US action in not granting him a Visa. Anil kind of convinced me that some of my opinions about Modi were in-conceived. Anil usually has a great deal of information, and for a few things where I had not believed him initially turned out to be true in the end. Anil drove home the point that most of the negative perceptions about Modi were because of relentless media campaign against him. Anil brought to my attention the fact that the special investigation team led by brilliant RK Raghavan had decisively rejected the claim that Modi didn't do enough to stop the riots. So, my perception about Modi slowly changed from negative to neutral. Even, Markos who is Greek, said he would vote for Modi if he had a chance :) There were also other influences from Anil. I started using twitter more enough and began following other people rather than the "biased" media organizations. Also, based on a Anil's recommendation, I was introduced to the website www.firstpost.com and the supposedly objective articles that it contained. Anyways, through this website, I started getting more and more opinions of people, some of which were pro-Modi and some anti-Modi, but I was becoming more and more convinced with the pro-Modi opinions.
2013 brought a big shift in my political inclination. This began with a news that I heard of an event where some of the top industrialists including Rata Tata praised Modi as if he was a superman. It generated a bit of curiosity in me and I wondered what this guy was doing which earned him such praise. A bit of research resulted in the observation that Gujarat was apparently doing much better than rest of the country, and was attractive good investments. Also, the administration in Gujarat was so much more efficient under Modi. He seemed to have a similar image as ChandraBabu Naidu of late 90's. Soon after this came his speech that he gave in Shri Ram College of Commerce. Given the great reviews that this speech received, me and my wife watched the speech and we were spell bound with his oratory skills. His speech emphasized that India needed development politics, and the tone of the speech was very optimistic as far as I remember. Many months later, after he became PM candidate of BJP based on his popularity, I tried listed to as much speeches as possible that he gave throughout the country. And, with every speech, my admiration of him only increased rapidly. He talked of development to get India to a rightful place in the world, and talked that development was the only solution to inclusion as was evident from Gujarat where even the minorities were prospering. Every speech talked of a new problem, and the will to solve it. I remember his speech somewhere in UP where he talked of cleaning Ganga, and that the attempt of the previous government at cleaning were mostly restricted to board meetings. He talked about promoting tourism when he visited beautiful places in India. These speeches were largely nice, except that understandably, they always included some rhetoric against dynastic politics and our meek prime minister. And there were some other speeches where he made mistakes with historical facts that earned him the name 'feku' by his critics during the election campaign. I remember the republic day speech, and there was absolutely no comparison between his speech and our prime ministers speech. Of course, not everything that he mentioned resonated with me such as his speech in Assam where he spoke against the Bangladeshi immigrants.
During my enhanced perception of Modi, my soft corner for Kejriwal still remained. To me, he looked like an extremely genuine guy representing a change in politics that India so much needed. His interviews were emotionally so touching, for example the interview he had given to Rajdeep Sardesai before the elections this year. However, I strongly felt that Modi was the person India needed and that AAP needed to prove themselves as someone who can give good governance, and also disclose their policies at the national level. I was so happy with the unexpected Delhi results, but then the days since then made me lose faith in the AAP style of politics. It appeared that all they wanted was to be in the prime time news in order to reach out to all the people ahead of the lok sabha elections. So, for the time being my heart stayed with Modi.
In the last days of elections in mid 2014, the interviews of Modi with Rajat Sharma and then with Arunabh Goswami just solidified my desire that Modi should become our next PM. I eagerly waited for the election results after such a long period of campaigning, and hoped that there was indeed a Modi wave which some people labelled as a myth. And, the results days was a very happy day for me. In fact, we celebrated that evening with some of our friends.
NOW, The first few days since Modi became PM have been extremely promising, as pointed by this Shashi Tharoor's article for which he is facing a lot of heat from within Congress (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shashi-tharoor/narendra-modi-shashi-tharoor_b_5434302.html). I hope Modi delivers on his promise of good governance, and we see a different India five years down the lane !! As Rajnath Singh says, I hope "HE WILL" !