Acche Din (Good Days)

I am not a Modi baiter; in fact, I am his admirer for his simple personal life and frugal requirements. However, it surprises me as to how deeply the Country, society, media, social media, institutions- you name it- have become divided amongst pro and anti Modi. This divide is so sharp that his admirers are blind to deficiencies in his governance while his baiters don’t see anything good at all! There are no middle of the road matured minds evaluating his achievements or failures strictly on merits.

His main plank was to promise “Acche Din” or “Good Days” and he started with a bang. He enforced strict punctuality in Government offices, visited hospitals unannounced, started reviewing ministries and departments, reviewed all the stuck up infrastructure projects, started Swachch Bharat campaign and embarked upon foreign diplomacy unseen hitherto. His impromptu visit to attend Nawaz Sharifs daughter’s wedding raised hopes of an unprecedented improvement in Indo Pak relations. But did an ordinary citizen of this country experience anything accha or good in all these 4 years? Did we see any change in ground reality? Probably not, if the following is any proof:

(1) Religionism and casteism have raised their ugly heads like never before – Jat stir, Maratha agitation, atrocities on Harijans, complete polarisation to the extent that even rape victims are being empathised with based on religion and after so many years of continuity, portrait of Jinnah at AMU is found objectionable and such stories are endless.

(2) In spite of highly publicised diplomacy, relations with neighbours – Pakistan, China’s, Nepal and Srilanka have reached a new nadir.

(3) While bullet train remains a big dream (and expensive one at that!), railways seem to be going from bad to worse with accidents, dirtiness, lack of punctuality, bad food etc and infrastructure in general deteriorating!

(4) While India is being touted as economic superpower, it’s economy is actually characterised by extremely high unemployment, scams and NPA hit Banking guzzling capital, unreliable stock markets and general inflation all round, with petrol prices amongst the highest in the world!

(5) Political acrimony is so high that each election (even insignificant by elections) seems like a matter of life and death and unholy alliance of anti BJP getting without any ideology with the sole aim of ousting BJP.

And on top of it, one set of social media tells us that what disasters will happen if Modi is not re-elected and second set telling us apocalypse likely to hit if Modi comes back.

Let the self-styled custodians of the welfare of this country be cautioned- there’s more to this country than its leaders and politicians. Politicians will come and go – some will be remembered for their good deeds others forgotten- but this oldest civilisation that survived worst of adversities, calamities, epidemics, barbarians, exploiters etc will survive to live another day to embrace one more politician and one more leader!