BJP - What next?

I have been thinking a lot on the reasons for BJPs defeat in the just concluded general election. The defeat was very clear and conclusive. It was a political defeat and not a defeat caused by the election (mis)management. I hope the top leadership of the party really introspects on the reasons for defeat. I hope it will be honest in this exercise.
I have listed below some points which are some of the reasons for its defeat. The party needs to address these issues if it wants to stay relevant in Indian politics:

1. Hindutva: Indian Hindus express their religion as a way of life. It does not mix up religion with governance / administration. Hence, asking for hindu votes with no credible governance will not work.

2. Indians and Hindus in particular do not like violence. Violence, specially attacks on places of worship (of any religion) is hence disliked by the people. The meaningless violence witnessed in the last 1 year have resulted in neutral people move away from BJP.
3. Media, specially the English language media is against / anti BJP. The party needs to handle this cleverly. All the good work that the BJP and it associated organizations are doing in different states is not communicated to the people. But when a church is attacked by some goons, it is flashed endlessly on all news channels during primetime. So the people associate BJP with violence and religious intolerance. The party should overcome this weakness and never give a chance to the media to exploit it.
4. BJP projected itself as a party with a difference. The difference as it communicated to people was in terms of integrity in public life and ethics in its administration / governnace. But it was very clear that the party forgot about this when it came to power. This has to bve addressed by inducting good / credible people into the party and giving them improtant roles.
5. Issue of 'Conversion' - This is one issue BJP has not handled intelligently. First of all, why do people convert from one religion to another? What type of people convert? If you are not providing the livelihood to the poor hindus and dignity in society, the poor are bound to go the religion that promises them that. This is law of the nature. Is BJP going to go against the law of nature? Instead why not work on empowering this class of people and stop conversion? How long are you going to complain / whine? Nobody will listen after a point.

There are many more...
But the above points are most important for the party to bounce back into the electoral politics. In order to retain in committed supporters the party has to show that it is making honest effort to change itself.

Last Wednesday was just another day when I was driving to work. It was a beautiful summer morning. The road connecting Bannerghatta road and Hosur road, there are many of these narrow tarred roads that pass through electronic city, was particularly empty and I was enjoying the early morning village scene, beautiful greenery around and the great carnatic music. Then, just a few seconds of time, dont know what to call those few seconds - time when I drifted momentarily, bad planetary position or just plain bad judgement, changed the course of the day.

I hit a girl who was walking on the side of the road. It is not clear still how it happened. I am not able to string together the events as everything happned in a few seconds. The girl is recovering still in a hospital at this point.

In the last one week, I have gone through different emotions, ranging from sadness, to anger, to helplessness, to just resignation to fate.

Sad to see the girl suffer unnecessarily. This is how accidents change the course of life for people. I should feel lucky that the girl will recover to be almost normal.

Anger at our police and their jaded, eighteenth century system. For all the leaps that our civil society has taken in terms of progress, the police system has not even strated forward movement leave alone being upto date with the rest of the society. I am not refering to the police stations or their way of recording the cases. I am talking about the male chauvinists sitting as cops in our stations. They refuse to talk to a woman. Even when I told them I am the offender, talk to me, they kept asking me to call my husband ('nimma yajamanarannu elli, swalpa mathadodide.'). If a person like me (who is working for a long time and who knows Bangalore), in a city like Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India), this is the attitude of the cops towards women, then can any woman in a remote village in a backward state like Bihar hope to be even heard? Are we not joking when we call our country a biggest democracy in the world, a developing country, aspiring to be the next superpower?

I finally have come to terms with my emotions. In my country, 60% of our people live in utter poverty. 70 % of our people are illiterate. 90% of the children are malnourished... What am I talking about? Do I have the right to crib about frivolous things like police attitude towards women? Should I not be grateful that I am educated, have food to eat every day and make a decent living and also have a car and the roads to drive on?

Funny money debate

One hears a lot about how it will help India to repay its debt by bringing home huge black money (funny money) stashed away in banks in so called tax heavens. The question is, are politicians really interested in bringing this money back into the country or is it just one more ploy to divert the attention of the media and public away from the real issues?

From the various articles and analysis published in news papers and magazines, it seems the debate is based on the findings of a fictitious source. Who created this media campaign? Who benefits from this? Is it a newsworthy item? Does it really require so much of debate? If the government or political party not in power is really interested taking action on this issue, it would have done it quietly. It is more of a publicity stunt than anything else. Is the media not capable of identifying this ploy of politicians? One really wonders in whose interest the media works in our country.

First Day

It has been a long time since I wrote something and shared with others. I have been thinking about starting a blog only recently. Today when I read an article by M J Akbar, I was forced to provide an identitiy on either goolge mail or blogger. That is how I ended up creating my blog - Sense and Sentiments. I want to use this space to express my opinions and ideas on a host of things about life in general and current affairs.
Here is wishing myself a happy blog life.