... giving Indian democracy a chance

Since last few days I have been thinking about writing about Aam Aadmi Party. I wanted to gather statistical data, read more what the organisation is doing and what they expect to do, instead here I am gathering thoughts and typing away just the way it is coming.

Living, practicing medicine in a conventional way and involving in poetry, visual arts and publishing in South Africa, it always excites me if a new political organisation gathers shape and takes to its wings at a provincial or a national level in India, the same way if an Indian politician takes to creative arts at a professional level or at least stops dozing away on the back benches of Indian parliament.

Sometime in the eighties, I had the fortune to attend a talk by a leading Indian Danseuse at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Student politics was left and extreme left and we all looked towards left even while walking towards the cafeteria. There were far more beautiful girls on the left rather than on the right. Somebody from the audience asked her, what can be the Marxist interpretation of your dance? Pat came her answer, I think, politicians know, how to dance.

There is a genocide going on at this moment in Central African Republic (CAR) which might surpass the figures of Rwanda in 1994. I have even coined the word of ‘Migration Medicine’ as a speciality and edited recently, a poetry anthology of Migration Poetry of South Africa.

Human beings interest me who wish to bring over a radical change and especially if they are from the South Asian subcontinent. We who migrated in search for better or worse happen to be a part of this change physically or virtually, when the mind takes over to our age old desires.

Politics in India is corrupt, dynastic and linear. Indian politicians stay glued to the emperor’s seat simply because they are addicted. The general masses that are the Aam Aadmi have become used to a single party rule and more or less to a single opposition cowering over them since independence. Intellectuals fear to voice their concerns simply because they need to be politically right to survive as an intellectual.

Corruption finally leads to violence and even genocides. The world is rife with such examples. The reader might feel unhappy at my comparison of India, its economic glory with failed republics like the CAR. There is some truth in it. If you arrive at Bangui today, there will be a scramble to remove all, whatever you are carrying even before you exit the airport premises. This scene looks pretty familiar to me, even a few years back at the Mumbai Airport when somebody wanted to quarantine me because I didn’t have proof of Yellow Fever Vaccination and I looked a bit yellow coming from Johannesburg. It’s only after I introduced myself that I got an irritable reply, ‘Pehle batana tha na, You should have told us before...’

The Civil Services in India is the crème de la crème of the Indian social structure, a colonial bastion, corrupt to the core and masquerades as India’s intelligentsia, encircles politicians and channels funds from corporate groups. If one needs to remove corruption in India, one need to break this so called impregnable structure.

Fighting an election on a political platform with one single ideology of breaking the tentacles of corruption may be right but I would still love to ask Arvind bhai about thousands of kilometres of ‘liberated’ land where villagers have decided to protect themselves from class enemies, how does he propose to assist in bringing them back in the mainstream of development. Who will release Kobad Ghandy? How would the urban middle and lower class Indian retain their confidence on Government structures?

I remember Sir Ken Robinson saying, even if there is a faint possibility that a revolution will happen, let’s bring in the revolution. Aam Aadmi Party has raised our hopes, even it means, storming the Bastille, then let it be so. We voted the Congress, we voted the BJP, we even voted the CPM, lets vote this time for Aam Aadmi Party and give this democracy a chance for the first time.