“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice” --T.S. Eliot
When Eliot wrote those words, he perhaps had political leaders and the fair-weather rich in mind. For, most of them love to forget what they said in the past to justify what they say in the present so that they can ignore that again in the future. As we enter 2023, India is expecting a new grammar, innovative adjectives and new nouns in place of old ones to define the New Year and the years thereafter.
If 2022 was a year of aspirations and desperation, 2023 is likely to be a convoluted cocktail of confrontation and consensus. Extravagant ceremonies of G20 in Y23 would bring consensus over a display of India’s great heritage and culture. The word secularism will vanish from the political vocabulary. Nationalism will find a place of pride. Assembly elections will further sharpen confrontationist politics. Good economics will surrender space to profitable politics. The entertainment industry is unlikely to exploit sacred symbols to maximise box office revenue liberally, and avaricious Industry tycoons will not have a free run on the banks. But the future doesn’t prevent anyone from committing to New Year Resolutions for themselves and others. So here goes:
Delivery of Minimum Government and Maximum Governance: For the new to be created, the old has to be destroyed. Prime Minister to review, revise and re-engineer his state craft and social engineering. He could begin by junking forever the slogan with which he began his first Prime Ministerial stint: Maximum Governance with Minimum Government. Eight years on, the old ways of working of old India haven’t changed. The country’s babudom hasn’t shrunk. Nor has government expenditure. It has risen from around 12.5 per cent in 2016 to over 16 per cent in 2021. The number of Union Ministers hasn’t come down either, but expenditure on their staff and offices has grown exponentially. Undoubtedly, governance has improved, but its cost has burgeoned. It is the most top heavy establishment since 2000, with a large number of retired civil servants getting extensions multiple times either in government or heading newly-created tribunals, commissions, and expert groups. According to a published report, “the payout to government employees has doubled since 2016”. Even the state governments are indulging in liberal spending on non-productive activities. The debilitating Rule of the Babus still survives and thrives. In the Naya Bharat of 2023, this needs to be tamed. For that, the establishment has to retrieve itself from the Goblin mode.
Khaas CEOs Out, Aam Workers In: We live in an Atmanirbhar Bharat, we are told, where Rajpath has been renamed Kartavya Path to indicate the definitive act of setting aside the yolk of slavery. Yet we have new imperialists amongst us, India Inc, whose leaders individually made more money than the average Indian. Income inequalities have never been as widespread as last year. According to published estimates, just one per cent of Indians own 33 per cent of the national wealth. The BJP government not only wooed them with liberal fiscal concessions but also feted them on various platforms. Those in distress were allowed to slip through the Indian Bankruptcy Code. Yet they were found missing when it came to the creation of extra jobs, offering a better working environment or even raising wages in proportion to the perks and salaries the promoters and CEOs were carrying home themselves. Even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat stated in 2019 that “despite tremendous economic progress, the wealth of the world is being controlled by a few”. India Inc could declare the era of privileged and pampered CEOs to be over and that of the Aam wealth creator to be in. Employees should be First and Promoters Last.
Khelo Bharat, Hello India Inc: Everyone, including the International Olympic Committee, which amended its motto in 2021 to add the word together to Faster, Higher, Stronger, knows sports unites people and breaks caste and community barriers. It’s both positively competitive and inclusive. Except in India, where its commercialisation has divided sports into classes. In many states, there are more golf courses than football or hockey grounds for training youngsters. On the other hand, athletes coming from the middle class and poor class are struggling for both national recognition and monetary value for their achievements. A gold medal at the Olympics doesn’t get even one-tenth of the money which a Virat Kohli gets after becoming a man of the series. Indian corporates are outbidding each other in purchasing cricketers at costs upwards of Rs 16 crore, but none of them would pay P T Usha even Rs 1 crore to train ten more athletic stars like her. In 2023, let India Inc adopt a team each from hockey, wrestling, football, swimming and archery. That would be enough to make Bharat win 100 gold medals in the Olympics and ensure mass participation.
Boycott Boycotts: Entertainment, again, is a great unifier. In every form, from film to folk art, pure entertainment brings joy to everyone, irrespective of ideology or identity. For the past few years, it has acquired a divisive drift due to excessive and obsessive social and religious scrutiny, with #BoycottBollywood trending on social media almost every day. Every dress, dialogue and song is seen through the prism of communal convenience or political pulse. There is a widespread feeling that every symbol of Indian faith and heritage is made the subject of ridicule. Let Indian cine moguls take a leaf from Hollywood’s playbook in 2023 and minimise the use of religion, sex and violence against women and children. Boycott boycotts should be the essence of this new cinema and the audience that consumes it. Dump Chuck de India for Chak de Bharat.
Naya Bharat Banao. India Bhaghao: Seventy-five years after Independence is enough time to adapt to the challenge of a new society which is looking for a new, non-Nehruvian model of culture and politics. The Ram Mandir movement led by L K Advani led to the emergence of a political Hindu who shunned the Congress brand of secularism. The idea of India has become a symbol of anything which is against Indian traditions. India is the only case of unity in millions of diversities. But the Indian Constitution that defines “India that is Bharat” promotes two different identities. Let Modi take credit for dropping India and retaining just Bharat. Let India, a British noun, be buried, and a new Bharat emerge, which has no caste, community or class.
Let Atmanirbhar Bharat also be a Bharat with Atmasamman.