Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Regionalism is result of timid leadership

These are my two cents on current regionalism threatening this beautiful bouquet called India.

The current spate of incidents highlighted once again the lack of bold leadership on part of political leadership and media.
No one has cared to carry out a survey in Mumbai to find out what people really think about the issue. In a democracy, the first logical thing would be to find out what people think about the issue. I guess one resistance for carrying out such a survey or study is the fear, primarily emanating from lack of trust in people's goodness that the outcome will be inconvenient and difficult to handle. The lack of boldness for handling the outcome is making politicians and establishment to shoot arrows in the dark, the only objective of which is to give an impression that they are "doing" or at least reacting to the situation and hope that 'this will also pass'.

I know, real people in every part of India cherish diversity and India's unique "Unity in Diversity", which is envied even by west. I know people take pride in being Indian and value of diversity established by founding leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Shastri etc.

I know, people take pride in any and every achievement of any Indian no matter which part of India he is from. Show me one Indian who did not jumped with joy when Tendulkar hit Abdul Quadir or Dhoni hit Aussies, or when Indian women won Common Wealth hockey championship, even if they never followed hockey?

I think the need is to give voice to the people without fear that the outcome will be inconvenient. Find answers to questions like what percent of people think that they would not like a north Indian no matter how good or talented that person might be. That they would not like to see a non-Marathi contribute to economy of the city, and would like to come across as unfair to anyone who is non Marathi.
These kind of surveys can then shape and provide political solutions for the issues.

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