Obama’s Cairo speech and the road ahead for India

I had the opportunity (25th June) to listen to the historic full speech of Barrack Obama on 4th June at the Cairo University. Follow the speech here.

The hearing followed by a discussion was kept at the American Center with a panel lead by Sadaf Aboli the President of NSUI-Mumbai and Mohammed Wajehuddin, Special Correspondent with the Times of India and moderated by Elizabeth Kauffman the Director of the American Center.

The speech by all means is a path breaking one, one which will in times to come serve as a good reminder should memory fail us about the good efforts started by this speech and there be moments of great tension in which all we can think of is applying swords to our throats.

It is only in America I think that such a quick turnaround is possible from a regime just a year ago whose ethos was so contrary to the one being pursued today. Many other parts of the world silently suffer totalitarian indifferent regimes even in so called democratic setups without being able to do much. India can be a prime example in my mind. Whether the complete lies of the Congress about a secular agenda and do gooder of the Muslims or the Shiv Sena’s blatantly to the contrary claims of having done any good for the Marathi manoos or Hindu religion (they cannot defend themselves against fellow Marathi breakaways, forget saving from the Muslims)

During the discussion session I had the following to share:

1) one of the key elements in my opinion was centered around one sentence ” But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors.” It touched upon something which has become characteristic in the Indian context. When did the general public or even organised groups and institutions speak their mind about what they feel about a particular situation or a party.

Yes the speech was historic and inspiring but more than that I see it as a long to-do list and more importantly I see it of relevance in the Indian context.

The binding thread through the speech was sincerity. It is sincerity which builds trust and which enables to be able to engage in mutual activities which heal wounds inflicted over years. And what I had to share with the group present somewhere was guided with my concern with the lack of sincerity in the Indian context about the deep communal divide which still exists within the Muslim and Hindu communities.

2) I shared with Sadaf Aboli my distrust of the so called secular agenda the Congress has followed in the past six decades which in my opinion is clearly psuedo secular and has very unabashedly and shamelessly worked at using the Muslims as a votebank with little regard for uplifting their conditions.

I shared the incidence of the fire at Behrampada as indicative. These are the very pockets, which bring the Congress to power recurringly time after time after time. And the kind of mind bogglingly bad conditions these people live in. One almost gets the impression that they do so out of an enormous love for living such. Because if things had to be improved then between Priya Dutt and Baba Siddique (not to forget the ‘very concerned’ humanitarian Sunil Dutt) and half a dozen other Muslim leaders that they have things would have improved 2 decades back.

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_behrampada-toll-now-5-two-more-bodies-found_1266953

http://firozeshakir.blogspot.com/search/label/muslims%20love%20killing%20muslims

It is being able to address these kind of issues which were required before teh Cairo speech and after nothwithstanding whether you were inspired or not.

And I feel more than having academic debates about the semantics and the content of the speech, it is important to use the speech as a good springboard to jump into action whereever it is needed. And the speech was not just about restoring the divide between the American and the Muslim world. In the Indian context there is a lot of work which remains to be done even inspite of the Muslim community being an integral part of the country.

20 kms of highway per day

I watchethe India Tonight show on CNBC where Karan Thapar spoke to (promoted) Kamal Nath, the new Minsiter for Roads and Highways. The show was a cleverly planned sequence of questions aimed at potraying the new Minister as dynamic and in a good light. This MO of asking just the right questions and putting words into the mouth has become a too mundane strategy by now.

But besides that Kamal Nath mentioned that he would like to see the rate of highway creation go up from 2-3 kms per day to 20kms per day during his term leading to the addition of a ‘whooping’ (Karan said it many times over) 30,000 kms of highways during his five year term.

All through the show Karan had no mention of the beginning of the highway program during the NDA government or the fact that it was during that government that the real changes began and which are still the benchmark considering the poor preformance during the previous UPA term.

Also Karan did not have any studied reports to corroborate some of the claims he was making. Much as he is a intelligent person and I consider him so it is pretty clear that such shows are pre-scripted and even the most intelligent of people cannot come about for a new show every night prepared with all the information on a topic within less than 24 hours.

Its time the old school boys network stopped licking each other and got down to taking their role of leading the country seriously.

Who are these people?

I was there today evening to hear the experiences of the ‘Waterman’ Rajendra Singh and Janak Daftary who were part of the recent Ganga Yatra, which saw two teams from opposite ends converge at Ganhar near Varanasi. It was a motley crowd of around 10 people who un-filled the large Babubhai Chinai Room at IMC.

Pollution, encroachment and exploitation were enumerated by Rajendraji as the key drivers of Ganga’s sad state of affairs, which I may almost identify as demise. He discussed in detail the various measures (half hearted at best) since 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi decided to announce the Ganga Action Plan more as a political strategy to as late as last year when the Manmohan Singh government decided to give the status of National River to the Ganga (another political strategy which yielded as good results as in 1985).

In the beginning he also highlighted the deep connections of Mumbai with the Ganga even as we receive no water from the river and are as further can be. He shared how visitors from Mumbai were the largest category of visitors visiting the Gaumukh and Char Dham Yatra as also maybe among those taking a dip at various places along the river.

This and his other answer to a question about involving the politicians along the Ganga were the chief areas of interest to me which I also raised during the Q&A. Rajendraji expressed his inability to understand the mind and the working of a politician which was primarily driven by the votes he gets. He did not mention the notes(bucks) but I would presume that to be the other flip side.

My views during the discussion were linked to people from Mumbai being one of the largest contingents to Gaumukh and yet such an event in Mumbai drawing only ten people for discussion. A lot of those present in the room were not the kind to be paying any serious religious obeisance to the Ganga but still having a deep sense of reverence and responsibility towards her. How many of those who travel the Char Dhams and visit Gaumukh and take dips are the ones who find discussions on the state of the Ganga relevant and would be doing something to improve the state of the river? Where is the aastha? and who are these people?

The need of the hour is to take the discussion about the Ganga to far beyond the thousands who take interest currently and into the minds and lives of lakhs and crores who currently only treat her as a ritual or an adventure sport. The politician along the Ganga or anywhere in the country for that matter is very closely in touch with his/her voter and knows that most of these people dont give a damn about what, who or how the Ganga is. And once we are able to change the state of mind of millions then reviving the Ganga will not be difficult.

A massive communication campaign is needed to highlight the fact that the National River has indeed become a sewer and everyone who has been involved in any ritual which invokes the Ganga needs to be clearly involved in discussions surrounding issues like grey water recycling (the sewage which defies the Ganga comes grey water) and energy conservation (the dams that devastate the upper reaches of Ganga are for generating electricity)

Pushpa Vijula one of the participants opined that most people in Mumbai are so caught up with the daily roti and kapda that there was no time for giving time to these things. To which my strong retort was that my mirror was not shown at the people in that category. It was clearly shown at the rich and educated classes from all castes and tribes and especially the Marwari’s and Gujrati’s a lot of whom are patrons of IMC and have enough time to spend time in casinos around the world and money on expensive liquor and cruises and multiple char dham yatra trips but will not spend time to come for such a talk and much less spend a dime on supporting organisations and individuals who support the cause.

The need of the hour is to clearly bring a sense of shame and responsibility to these shameless people, a lot of whom also have an exaggerated sense of India’s greatness in coffee table discussions but are clearly the cause of the lack of any greatness left in Indian culture.