BJP has been sweeping polls across the states with a strong mandate. The resounding victory is a clear sign of carefully crafted election campaigns and election management strategy. The success story of BJP goes from massive public rallies, road shows of strength to thousands of whatsapp groups of BJP cadres to mobilise people into voting in favour of BJP. What was largely seen missing in other regional parties.
The level of strength has allowed BJP to go into polls without projecting a face of a regional leader. Domineering the states by unifying the opposition parties and taking them head on, BJP has knocked the doors of federalism in India. A case of strong centre backed with a equally cooperative state government. In believing so, it has ordinarily dismissed the voices on the other side.
Voice of Dissent
In a country as big as India, there are matters that crop in . We switch from one news channel to another to find issues and cases that are swayed away in the political drama. Narendra Modi's government has taken the course of discussion in their own hands. 3 years ago when the country was discussing cricket, Bollywood, political scams and reality TV. A disruptive style of Modi wave caught the attention of the masses by changing the spectacle of new India.
The pace at which Narendra modi government is heading is expansively broad and fast for others to catch up. The course of discussion that revolved around caste identity is now based on e-wallets and payments. The political syllabus has altered dramatically and it has been difficult for the opposition with a lack of vision to pick up substantial points where they can prowl on governance issues.
Quite clearly, the intellectual authority of India has dumbed down with flag bearers of secularism baring opportunities to play guardians of regional communities with little credibility. With more politicians sticking to populist measures of distribution of freebies, there's little to focus on issues of governance. A battered opposition like Congress can only come up with accusations of pinning down Modi for re branding formed schemes introduced under UPA government with new names and fighting over legacy of Mahatma and Sardar Patel.
Going against the popular opinion, how the voice of dissent in India is changing with the rise of BJP's dominion as the single largest political party in India. Empowering the digital democracy with a 5 point critique we are here stand for transparency and free information. It goes out to feed the healthy spoons of criticism to BJP & those who seem to be famished of public opinion
Kiren Rijiju the minister of central government raised his disapproval at questioning authorities.
Democracy is an active form of participation but when the voters are passive in their interests, it is very much possible for the government to harangue the people for exercising their rights. This is what happened when the minister was questioned on Bhopal Jail break case. Instead, of coming up with a sincere and responsible statement he chose to lash out at people who remind the authority of their jobs of maintaining law and order. What happens when the elected ones choose to break the fundamentals of democracy.
Prime Minister's drawing contrast of opposition's voice with Pakistan in times of demonetisation.
PM Narendra Modi may well be a great orator but comparing the opposition with Pakistan was nonparallel for a person holding the office of Prime Minister. Loose statements like this is something we don't expect from the prime minister. This notion is percolated down in the party and echoes through MPs who find silly reasons to create news with similar lines of absurdity. It is time, that the rhetoric is toned down.
Making aadhar mandatory to avail mid day meals for children
If putting our privacy at risk wasn't enough, the central government had no shame in bullying it's way through schools, making Aadhar mandatory by challenging the right to food of school children. Mid day meal is one of the primary reason why children are enrolled in high numbers mid day meal program covers more than 100 million children across 1.15 million schools. Instead of making our schools more conducive for learning, we are falling back on human resource development. This intrusion of Aadhar in every sphere of life needs to stop before we have to deal with a menace of irresponsible handling of data. On being, confronted for forcing citizens to sign up for aadhar, senior minister Arun Jaitley went to the extend of openly admitting that they are violating the Supreme court's orders in Parliament.
Internet outages
There was more Internet outages in India in 2016 than any other country. It is terrifying, how the government shuts down Internet at the time of insurgency. Annually, 6000 crore rupees are lost due to the outages which costs more than the mars misson of ISRO. A dream of digital India is incomplete, if the government can build the required infrastructure to curb misinformation online instead of clamping down on the rights of netizens by shutting down the Internet completely. Folks at Internet freedom foundation have taken up the cause by launching the campaign of raising awareness about the Internet outages, you can support it by singing the petition at
www.keepusonline.in
Demonetisation
Reliance Jio & PayTm had the best of demonetisation. It was time for companies to expand well on the gap of banks surging new currency into the system. The long list of beneficiaries cradled the government with goodwill and later had to apologies for using Prime minister's pictures on their full fledged advertisements. It was failure on the part of the government to call for demonetisation without facilitating the required infrastructure that resulted in deaths of more than 100 people.
Digital Democracy
Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of a democratic society - Jimmy Carter
The government is functioning heavily on the big data resources. It has pooled in the information and tends to dictate from it without consultation from the public. Bhopal Jailbreak, calling off the NDTV ban, cancelling the license of 20,000 NGOs were strict measures government took to curb the falsifying atmosphere. Stop the government from sweeping the facts under the rug and critique your government.
Ideally we need better channels for criticism. It would take a serious effort for the voters to go beyond the socially engineered construct of political hyperbole. When all we hear about how much sleep is sacrificed by our Prime minister Narendra Modi, any other person questioning the working Prime minister would be deemed insensitive. The fact that Prime minister is seen skipping along the lines BJP's active campaigner as a poster boy and Prime minister of the country. It is a worrying sign if the lines gets blurred.
Transparency
The information you receive may be immersed with a bias. To ensure we have transparency in information there's Reddit and Quora platforms of content sourcing. It is important to establish more channels of criticism in the times when the presence of government parties have dominated the social media. The information wants to be free. The risk of censorship at the hands of social media giants should not stop the netizens from critiquing the government. Facebook might have censored the post IPS officer D. Roopa criticising BJP MP but the power of internet is too big and far reaching than a social media giant. If BJP appears famished today, we as dutiful citizens of India must make sure we feed the party with healthy spoons of criticism to create a free thought current that celebrates transparency in the system.
Comments
Post a Comment