I have great dreams. Not the dreams that you have when you are asleep, but the one that you fabricate and aspire during the bright wakes of the day, you know day dreams. I do that a lot. So I have great dreams. A lot of them.
Some of them are practical like the one in which I land on a good job in a nice city, live in a small but perfect apartment with 52 inch plasma TV, HD DVD player, Xbox, home theater speakers and a supermodel neighbor who likes above said gadgets. Then there are some, which are just plain stupid, like me inventing some incredible gizmo which gets stolen by Mr. Evil trying to destroy the planet, only to be dramatically stopped by me in a climax of Stallone-Schwarzenegger -ical proportions. But between dreams that are ambitious and, some might say, pathetic, I have a dream in which I am a political leader. Since it’s just a dream, and more importantly my dream, I don’t hold anything back and hence I will assume nothing less than the most profitable one, the prime minister of India. I love my country and if there is any nation I shall ruin, it must be my own.
Yes, I said it, and I am not sure in which party I will be. Given my plagiaristic ideology, it wouldn’t be fair on the leaders who found them if I give any particular party the pleasure of having me as their solemnly pledged supremo. It is safe to assume that I will have my own party. I am still working on the name.
Now Dr. Manmohan Singh, the current prime minister, the economist responsible for 1991 reform which resulted in India as we see it today, is in every possible way, holds a better resume than me. As long as he was in the competition, I felt I did not have a realistic chance of being elected to the top. But a recent blog, by Ms. Sagarika Ghose, in CNNibn gave me hope. It had everything I like about blogs, simple topics, simple words and an air of ‘know-it-all-but-Its-not-my-job-to-spoon-feed-you’ entitlement’, but more importantly it had the conclusion that supports my goals. The crux of the blog is, as understood by “Manmohan Singh's greatest failure is that he could have opened a new era in the involvement of 'good people' in politics….. Instead all he has managed to show is just how distanced he and the entire educated middle class is from the netajis……if anyone can push economic reforms through in India, it will be… natural born leaders and charmers of crowds like Mayawati and Modi and to some extent Buddha, state level leaders of people …”, Dr. Singh is not a good politician. Although, since Dr. Singh himself has said it before, which makes the blog completely redundant, Ms. Ghose’s idea of who is better at leading the nation to the future is exceptionally brilliant.
Here I was thinking that I need a lot of political skills- ability to identify problems, capable of prioritizing the issues and implementation of their solution, skillfulness in foreign policy issues, ability to think about the nation’s future needs and challenges, unbiased clarity of thought and most importantly put one’s nation before any personal or related obligations, if I aspire to the PM of India. Turns out, as Ms. Ghose has so analytically pointed out, all I need is to be a shepherd of my herd (of lambs or buffalos, depending on the way you see yourself in the mass). Forget Gandhi, Nehru and ‘to an extent Buddha’; I’ve got my heroes in Modi and Mayawati.
Who better to learn politics from than Mr. Modi, a person explained by Rajdeep Sardesai, editor in chief – CNNibn as a man “symbolic of the Hindu-Muslim fault-lines that exist in our society, a symbol of the darkness within”. When you are aspiring to be a leader, take a page from a man who was allegedly responsible, keyword-allegedly, for Gujarat riots of 2002, which resulted in death of about 2000 people and in which around 600 children were made orphans. The event as explained by, again, Rajdeep Sardesai, (but this time) husband of Ms. Ghose (‘Mrs’ rather), as a “sustained campaign of hate, prejudice and violence between Hindus and Muslims, one which tapped into a wider constituency in Gujarat and beyond.” Aah yes, how I vividly remember the video clips of burning properties as Indians went on a happy killing spree of , well, Indians as the cries of an infant, whose nearby is a recently mutilated carcass, likely his/her care taker, were muffled by the chants (Anti-Hindu/ Anti-Muslim depending on the clip) made by the killing Indians. Yes, he is a natural born leader and indeed a crowd charmer.
I am not sure about Mayawati, though. She reminds me of my ‘school aaya’- the lady who cleans up the verandahs after students had their lunch, except that the politician version uses goons instead of a broom. While one cleans up the mess, the other is a source of it.
So there it is, the day dreaming has reached its climax. The blog by Mrs. Ghose (I guess she kept her maiden name) was an eye opener and I am truly happy that today I found my political guru, whose steps I can follow to make sure my nation becomes a global power. And I have decided that my new party shall be christened as FMCV - F@#k Morals. Count the Votes Party.
And thank god, most of my day dreams are not real.
