[ In medieval England a warm water bath in a tub was a luxury. So whole families would indulge in a community bath a couple of times in a month., all dipping into the same precious hot water. The kids came last, obviously, and by their turn the water in the tub was dark with dirt and soap, if not actually black. It is reported that sometimes a child could be not be spotted in the turbid grime, and when the dirty water was finally discarded, a baby or two was also drained out with it ! This is the genesis of the saying ” throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”]
This is a piece on politics, or the legerdemain that passes as politics in India today. Quite a few friends and colleagues advise me not to write on politics, but to to stick to the bureaucratic shenanigans I have been a willing part of. Now that’s problematic for me, much as I dislike these scoundrels, because politics and politicians intrude into every nook and cranny of our lives, and can only be ignored at our own peril. I remember the wise words of Cicero: you may not be interested in politics but that does not mean that politics is not interested in you. And so I return this week to my home state of Ulta Pradesh, and the impending elections there, with my two bits.
The waters in this Indo- Gangetic Bathtub have never been of RO quality, but over the last five years they have become of cess-pool quality; which was inevitable when an unrepentant fanatic was entrusted with governing the 8th largest administrative unit on the planet. It has become the worst performing state in the country according to Niti Aayog itself, its once vaunted bureaucracy reduced to scavenging for favours, its police a raptorial uniformed force. Baba Yogi and his party have not been able to deliver on any tangible because they have been too obsessed with the manufacture of hate and repression on an industrial scale, and the instruments of delivery, the civil services, have been rendered dysfunctional. But it would be unfair to single out the Baba Yogi alone: his job has not been made easier by the monumental failures of Mr. Modi, from outright dissembling to destruction of the economy, Olympian arrogance, cronyism, pandemic blunders, delusions of grandeur and encouragement of religious bigotry.
Read Complete article at Avay Shukla’s Blog!
