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Thursday, December 21, 2017

Congress President Rahul Gandhi - a thought profile


Rahul Gandhi, President of Indian National Congress (Indira), is aiming at transforming the Indian system, especially the political system, completely.  He believes that there is a structural problem in the Indian system with people, especially the women, are not enabled. Further, Rahul Gandhi believes that there is no transparency and democracy in the political parties in particular and in the political system in general.  His political aim, as he claims, has longer timelines is to enable women in real terms.  Funding on political parties, path forward on corruption, selection of political candidates, process of policy making, women empowerment, deepening of democracy, forward path on RTI are, according to Rahul Gandhi, real issues. Rahul Gandhi thinks that he is attacked by his adversaries because he is asking fundamental questions.  

On the economical front, Rahul Gandhi, appears to be influenced by China.  He is influenced by people, especially the Western people, who are trying to pitch India as a competing manufacturing hub to Chinese dominating sector.  Rahul Gandhi believes that low rate of employment growth is the most important problem of India.  He would like to take measures that increases the growth of employment rate to that of the China.  It appears that Swadeshi and Gram Swarajya concepts of Gandhiji are completely out of consideration by Rahul Gandhi and Congress party.  

Rahul Gandhi appears to be unsympathetic towards non-Congress leaders who participated in Independence struggle.  Especially, those leaders who are seen today as Hindutva icons such as Savarkar and Tilak appears to be not in the mind space of Rahul Gandhi.  Even Netaji and other such leaders who were opposed to Nehru are not considered as important icons by the Congress party.  Outlook of Nehru family appears to be dominating the outlook of the INC party.  While he has read Gita after 45th year, as he has publicly admitted, it is not clear how much is he aware of the contents of Vedas, Purana, Smrithi and Itihasa.  Rahul Gandhi is committed to secularism but is not able to provide Indian interpretation in the context of eternal harmonious values of Hinduism.  On the other side, 

Rahul Gandhi repeatedly talks about Politics of Hope, initiating a conversation with public and making Indian as first identity and other identities of caste, religion and class identities secondary.  Rahul Gandhi would like to promote many younger newer faces who are solid and decent.  Rahul Gandhi accuses BJP for attempts to appropriate Gandhi-Patel who were critics of RSS.  Rahul Gandhi also considers Savarkar who secured his release by accepting British terms in writing.  While Savarkar was strategically positioning himself w.r.t British, Rahul views him as surrendered to British. 

Monday, July 17, 2017

Resident rights and Family rights for better Democracy

Western governments are promoting Individual rights as the highest value against the old social institutions such as religion.  It should also be observed that governments are curtailing individual rights and freedom when they act against the state authority.  It appears that the western governments are attempting to isolate individuals from each other and connecting them directly with the state apparatus. Families are weakened, communities are displaced and forced to intermingle while individualism is promoted to extreme levels.  Democracy and globalization is promoted and infact imposed on the rest of the world by the Western powers.  Global treaties, economic as well as military blocks are influencing the adoption of primacy of individual rights bu governments of even eastern and African countries. 

However, overemphasis on individual rights with legalizing LGBT marriages, teaching children to seek legal intervention against their parents, monitoring families through domestic violence and divorce laws have created their own set of problems.  These problems are not just limited to social and psychological aspects but also covering the law and order and public order. Especially in India, emphasis of individual rights and neglect of common rights is creating havoc and multitude of problems.  For example, prevalence of corruption may be attributed to overemhasis of individualism and derecognition of social monitoring mechanisms.  Similarly, it has become easy for vested interests to dominate public affairs for their advantage causing inconvenience to generally law abiding massess.  Garbage, liquor and othe such lobbies are systematically controlling all aspects of the public.  Similarly, the source of  intolerance, terrorism, honor killing, commual riots, illegal conversions and other such problems can be traced to neglect of resident rights, family rights and caste rights.   Civic problems and linquistic problems have roots in neglect of residents rights, locality rights, city/state/country rights.  

As an example, low compliance culture promotes corruption and in town planning department leads to rampant illegal approvals for new constructions.  Owners of houses prefer not to provide parking spaces forcing residents to park their vehicles on roads. This leads to road congestion and never ending traffic problems.  Further, crowded roads leads to living problems and law and order problems with residents troubled by nuisance parking in front of their houses.  As another example, neglect of family rights leads to aggravation of honor killing.  The law does not check incitement of an outsider to a family member to marry without the knowledge or consent and in many cases against the wishes of his/her parents. Interference within a family creates resentment and difficulty to family members which is unnecessary.  During the conflict and in conflict resolution, individual freedom tramples the family rights and thereby rights of other family members against the freedom of an outsider.  It is hightime to give common rights its due while managing public affairs.