The season of elections is upon us. The Opposition’s search for a winning electoral strategy to challenge the dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party must contend with the inherent contradictions of a fractured polity that has birthed the disarrayed political parties but which must now come together in a unity of larger purpose. The state of the nation, riven by endless schisms, dehumanising insensitivity to the human condition, and an accentuated assault on constitutional fundamentals presents an exceptional situation meriting an extraordinary response. An objective scrutiny of the state of ‘Naya Bharat and Shreshta Bharat’ lays bare as never before, the nation’s depressing social and political realities.
The real India
The heart-rending destitution, exploitation and unfreedom of the multitude mirrors the reality of a not-so-shining India, despite a rising economy that has only widened the economic and social disparities in the absence of distributive equities. The agonising reality of a nation in distress is visible in the fate of 35.5% of the country’s undernourished and stunted children, in the stony eyes of forsaken widows, mothers grieving for the loss of their children to addiction and hopelessness, unable to bear the grief of their innocent daughters having lost their smile forever to the ravages of lust and violence, and the unbearable grief of a father compelled to see his children starve to death.
