Inspiration

Starting spring all through good weather days, this old lady religiously comes to work on her piece of land behind our apartment - tiling, planting, weeding, cutting, watering...she spends many hours there and it seems like its something she enjoys. 

People her age back in India rarely do anything that they enjoy at a personal level. They would rarely do anything that involves as much physical effort. The mentality would be that of life coming to an end...

From the way she walks, I can tell she perhaps has troubles with her knees and even her back, yet she does all this back breaking work, all by herself. She inspires me - to be like her when I am that age - find the joy in doing things that interests me...do everything in my control to physically be in a position to do so.

There is often a strange sense of pleasure every time I see her driving up her car to the piece of land, to see her going about her work. I look forward to seeing her :)

How context matters

Sitting in a country that has a crazy history thanks to one extremely crazy man and his bunch of crazy people, I watch the frenzy of fellow Indians towards one man during the 2014 elections, I cannot not think how dangerous this sort of frenzy could become...

In the time I have spent in Germany, I have had a lot of exposure via different sources about its history. How it all started - it all made a lot of sense when it started and the world knows how it all eventually turned out. This is the history which many would like to forget but at the same time its important to remember so such things do not get repeated. 

India is the world's largest democracy. Our older generation went through a lot, fought hard to make the country one. It is also incidentally one of the young countries in the world. Agreed we are not where we could be and would like to be 1947 and hence. But in my opinion, the restless younger generation and those seeking the American dream in India are being a bit ignorant about facts that are important to be considered. 

• With events in 2008, it is quite clear that the American dream is not perfect. 
• The European model of a socialist flavored capitalism is also under a lot of stress. So in my eyes, there isn't any clear winner. 
• Unemployment is not a problem unique to India. It is even a problem in the developed world. Governments in the developed world are also struggling to find solutions for this. 
• A favorite comparison among many Indians is that to the progress made by China. Sure. All credits to China for their achievements. But they are not governed and ruled by the way we are. How would this bunch of youth in India feel if the Facebook and WhatsApp apps did not work on their smart phones? - Think we need to be careful what we wish for and not take our democracy for granted. 
• the governing years of the incumbent has definitely done a lot of harm to the country, but they were elected by the people of the country. So its not fair to project all those years as if they were ruled by some autocrats who refused to budge from their positions. The democratic process (however screwed it might have been) was followed all through.

I am all in favor of giving someone else a chance. 

Given the levels of transparency and corruption, I believe there is no way a common person will ever know the truth behind the riots in Gujrat. Yes, I also know that other parties are not clean of such acts. 

Horrible as it sounds, even if I choose to move on and give this person a chance to prove himself, I think it is important for all of us to be cautious. It is important to remind ourselves that ours is a large complex country with great disparities and one person wielding the stick isn't going to work. 

What India needs are large scale reforms in its policies. Which policies are priority? What changes are they standing for? E.g. 'Obamacare' was very talked about and known from the very beginning. 

Not much details are known about such topics and interestingly not many people are asking. In a talk show with this popular PM candidate, a woman, so enamored by this man that all she wanted to know what who his fashion designer is. Phew!! How would that affect her daily woes? 

I ask myself if I would have thought along these lines if I were not sitting in Germany - very aware of its past... sensing a weird, scary similarity of the rise of one man above his party and other parties...feeling uncomfortable. Uncomfortable because:

• ours is a parliamentary form of government, so it has always been electing a party over a person. In 2014 it doesn't seem so. 
• this person for some (including me) has a stamp of being a Hindu nationalist. I am a Hindu and I do not believe a diverse country like India can afford this
• this person talks about development in a very black and white manner with no emphasis on the sustainability aspects of them or the cost of such development. 
• the man has a reputation of having an authoritative style of leadership. Perception has it, that it worked in one state in the country. But the country is too diverse to be lead along the directions of one man and his definition of progress and development. (Even his own party members are not completely with him in some cases). Taking the entire nation forward in cooperation with warring local state governments is not an easy task. But there is no sense of humility about this humongous challenge. Instead it is arrogance that comes across as if the solutions are all lying in his desk...just waiting for the opportunity to come to power. 

The beauty of our democracy brought a complete newbie to become Chief Minister of our capital city. I hope the beauty of our democracy will also be sane enough to smell it when it is going in the wrong direction and not let one man rule supreme in our life. 

It is famously said, "a country gets the government it deserves." Huh! I wonder...