IITians turning a new leaf
Today I came to know about this . It is about 5 IITians who have gone ahead and launched a political party of their own. 2 of them happen to be my batchmates, people whom I have perhaps seen too closely to be able to visualize them in the bigger picture of politics. I am not even feeling like saying "Bravo !" or "Way to go !" or may be get inspired yes, but I would say "Best of Luck !. If that is where your calling is, go get it."
Politics is something close to my heart. I like it for I think it is only way you can bring about change in the longer run. Anything, any activity that would reach the masses will tend to become politicized sooner or later. Efforts to curb those tendencies will only be able to take you so far. And so for any nobel effort to succeed, it is very important that the politics around it is in good shape. Now what does "politics being in good shape" means is another matter all together. May be we can discuss that some other time.
One example that immediately comes to mind is RSS. I have come in touch with RSS at various points of my life and really like the basics, the principles on which it is based. However, they have tried to keep themselves strictly "non political" instead choosing to have a separate, a little too separate may be, political presence in form of BJP. The model has hardly scaled beyond a point. Till the party was small, leadership was strong, seats were less, power was far away and stacks were low, it worked fine. But it had to change one day and what is happening right now is for everybody to see.
In fact, it is interesting to see Congress in this light. What happened there is slightly different. They didn't have any reservation about politics since the beginning. That was the tool that they wanted to use to get independence and in the form of Gandhi, they found somebody that gave them strong moral and social underpinning. With Gandhi, congress was not a party, it was a movement that reached out to every Indian. Interestingly, Gandhi wanted congress to be dissolved at the time of independence. He was afraid that the movement that he created would become limited to a party. The change for which the whole thing had started had been achieved.
The new independent India was based on the principles of that movement. And now it needed a new start. For a movement that achieved such great success, it would have been pretty difficult to start from the scratch and that is what happened. In the beginning no one noticed because there were good leaders and more importantly, there was momentum. Once that momentum died down, cracks were wide open for everybody to see. The whole great movement was reduced to a mere party whose biggest claim to power was that it got us independence. Something went wrong along the way and nobody noticed.
But things go on and it is very easy to preach in retrospect. A new beginning is never too late. The particular beginning mentioned at the starting of this post, however, seems to be too early. But good luck and may God bless !
Update: On reading the post myself, I felt the need of writing some more. The comment in the last paragraph is not about the personal capabilities of the persons. I have my own convictions about how such steps should be taken and according to them, I find it a step taken "too early". Yes, I might be wrong and they may be wrong and despite that they may succeed. I would be a happy person if they do. I respect people that follow their hearts, they are so hard to come across, but that does not mean that I agree with them also. So with all due respect, my best wishes are with them. They probably have a good beginnign as sachan says in the first comment and people say, "A good beginning is half work done". However I think whoever said that probably never finished anything.
Politics is something close to my heart. I like it for I think it is only way you can bring about change in the longer run. Anything, any activity that would reach the masses will tend to become politicized sooner or later. Efforts to curb those tendencies will only be able to take you so far. And so for any nobel effort to succeed, it is very important that the politics around it is in good shape. Now what does "politics being in good shape" means is another matter all together. May be we can discuss that some other time.
One example that immediately comes to mind is RSS. I have come in touch with RSS at various points of my life and really like the basics, the principles on which it is based. However, they have tried to keep themselves strictly "non political" instead choosing to have a separate, a little too separate may be, political presence in form of BJP. The model has hardly scaled beyond a point. Till the party was small, leadership was strong, seats were less, power was far away and stacks were low, it worked fine. But it had to change one day and what is happening right now is for everybody to see.
In fact, it is interesting to see Congress in this light. What happened there is slightly different. They didn't have any reservation about politics since the beginning. That was the tool that they wanted to use to get independence and in the form of Gandhi, they found somebody that gave them strong moral and social underpinning. With Gandhi, congress was not a party, it was a movement that reached out to every Indian. Interestingly, Gandhi wanted congress to be dissolved at the time of independence. He was afraid that the movement that he created would become limited to a party. The change for which the whole thing had started had been achieved.
The new independent India was based on the principles of that movement. And now it needed a new start. For a movement that achieved such great success, it would have been pretty difficult to start from the scratch and that is what happened. In the beginning no one noticed because there were good leaders and more importantly, there was momentum. Once that momentum died down, cracks were wide open for everybody to see. The whole great movement was reduced to a mere party whose biggest claim to power was that it got us independence. Something went wrong along the way and nobody noticed.
But things go on and it is very easy to preach in retrospect. A new beginning is never too late. The particular beginning mentioned at the starting of this post, however, seems to be too early. But good luck and may God bless !
Update: On reading the post myself, I felt the need of writing some more. The comment in the last paragraph is not about the personal capabilities of the persons. I have my own convictions about how such steps should be taken and according to them, I find it a step taken "too early". Yes, I might be wrong and they may be wrong and despite that they may succeed. I would be a happy person if they do. I respect people that follow their hearts, they are so hard to come across, but that does not mean that I agree with them also. So with all due respect, my best wishes are with them. They probably have a good beginnign as sachan says in the first comment and people say, "A good beginning is half work done". However I think whoever said that probably never finished anything.
Comments
I have been with both bharat and chandu pretty closly, as bharat was my roomy and chandu my neighbour. They have a mission...yes, greater goals..yes, a vision..probably, resources...most probably not, and moral support...plenty, to begin with. Both of them are too conscious to be driven just by enthusiasm ( as many would think).
They are going to pursue their mission in one way or the other, despite success or failure, I'm pretty sure of that much.
It takes very few people to change the world...just that no-one tries.