Unless you live under a rock or in Zimbabwe or something, you would have probably heard the biggest headline article this week concerning the Indian Elections. It was a pretty big occasion and was fittingly hyped to that level. But that was before the counting process and after the voting booth selfies. Then the results came in and the hype broke all barriers. It was like Slumdog Millionaire all over again but of course with some fundamental differences. One can be characterized as a controversial and shockingly realistic story of success and the other one was Slumdog Millionaire. The election fiasco probably got a lot more popularity mainly because there was no Frieda Pinto type of character in that story.( If you’re thinking Mayawati, then you need serious therapy )
India has always had this reputation of pulling a rabbit out of the hat. They run their own political thriller drama and call it Politics. We have the imported lead characters from Italy. We have the underdog who cannot get a US visa, maybe because he pronounces it ‘Bheesa’. We have comic relief from both highly educated people like Arvind Kejriwal and also from those who use a calculator to count their fingers, like Rahul Gandhi. Adding all these elements up, you would have no doubt that the underdog would have emerged victorious in the Lok Sabha Elections this year. You may know that every character in a story has a number of haters and a number of followers. The love-hate arguments they have eventually lead to the popularization of that character. I am not the biggest fan of Narendra Modi but since the milk is already spilt, I’m going to try and take out some positives from this situation for those who are like me.
I wasn’t familiar with that many people who were aware of the happenings of Indian politics before our trusty tea vendor came into the picture. I didn’t pay attention to politics either and honestly, was quite ignorant of it. I don’t know if college kicked in or mob mentality did but, I started watching political debates and reading articles in the paper. Such may be the case of a large population of the Indian mid 20s crowd. This is a major advancement in terms of overall awareness considering that most people didn’t give two shits about Pranab Mukherjee or Prathiba Patil being president. To be honest, I’m pretty sure their own families didn’t take out more than 10 minutes to congratulate them either. Abhijeet Mukherjee looks like he still doesn’t know what a president is and the location of Pratibha Patil is almost unknown now. Well, at least she isn’t using tax payer’s money to abscond to an exotic location anymore. Getting back to the point, I’m happy that Agent Dandiya helped a larger population be aware on the political drama. It is pretty hard to get 20 year olds in college to agree or follow someone who orchestrated mass riots and indirectly killed thousands believes in this dry state concept. Ridiculous
I would not want to go into awful stereotypes of how muslim extremists are the sole cause of terrorism related activities but then again, they are stereotypes for a reason. At the very least, one may be able to find a tiny positive out of the 2002 communal riots. Let’s say you are a member of the Lashkar E Taliba and you want to carry out your quota of regular bloodshed. You proceed to go look for a nice beautiful and populated place you can annihilate happily. Excluding regular distractions from weird shit like goats or whatever they do for fun in the Middle East, how would a terrorist go about figuring out his Modus Operandi? He would first eliminate all the places which he cannot bomb and hopefully, with a Hindu extremist leader in control of the country, India will find its way onto that list. Who in their right minds would want to screw with a Hindu extremist with a colorful history of indirectly killing Muslims? Exactly.
Following politics isn’t something which widely resonant in the country, but political jibing and complaining is more common than the number of engineering students here, which is saying a lot. When India’s arguably best economist was handed the position of Prime Minister and the rupee still sank to new lows, you might find yourself at a loss of words. Expectations soar higher with every new line in your CV. Narendra Modi is what someone may call, street smart. He will find his way around things through any means possible and not give a damn about the path he takes, but that seems like a glamorous portfolio only until you are thrown under the bus by the government. Concentrating on the brighter note, with the massive margin he won in the Elections, it would be safe to assume that he has the joint approval of a vast majority in India. This would imply that, most of the voters would be in whole hearted support of his future decisions, even if it is borderline hypocrisy at some point of time. Then again, hypocrisy is seen as a lesser crime than freedom of opinion so we’re in the green here. India will continue giving their support for the new prime minister and as citizenry of democracy, that counts for a lot.
The biggest boon this election campaign brought us was the disintegration of the Congress party. It’s funny how it took this long though. There will be no more of Kapil Sibal and his eyebrows babbling nonsense on live television. There will be no more of Dr. Subramanian Swamy acting like a stuck up 15 year old Hindutva supporter. Although I feel bad for Manmohan Singh, I’m happy he’s ridden of his duties to the Italian estrogen bomb called Rahul Gandhi. Our daily quota of slapstick entertainment will come to a standstill without Rahul Gandhi doing monkey antics on live television. Sanjay Jha will fill in for Rahul Gandhi in this, mainly because his bills are paid by stupid statements and Arnab Goswami’s anger. We have escaped diving deeper into a forest fire but we haven’t extinguished the flames completely. With the rupee gaining a tiny amount of credibility over the days, the overall situation has begun to show some hope. So here’s to moving one step forward and not having to fall another 2 steps back.
The Daily Offensive 