An Open Letter to Rahul Gandhi

You must be getting a lot of feed back of your strutting across India, of your utterances and non utterances and I hope these are uncensored by your sycophants and coterie that surround you and your mother. If uncensored then you will get a correct assessment of what Indians think of you and your ambition to become the Prime Minister. After all we are a rich poor country –a rural urban one and though you like to fool the people by saying that you belong to the poor India, they are not zombies to take that at face value. You may peep into a dalit house-you may share a couple of rotis with a dalit man-you may hop on to a motor bike and be given a ride by a criminal but you  and all these gimmicks cannot change to a fairly large extend the impression one gets from your inability to connect to the nation. You are trying no doubt, and in the process making yourself a laughing stock. Unlike your grandmother and great grand father you cannot connect to India and her people- except that you come from the Nehru Gandhi family and that is not enough for the nation to accept you as a PM. But what is shocking is the fact that you can even think of such a possibility because it is a disaster.

With this preamble let me context it to the ‘Globalization excludes as much as it includes’ (21st Oct Indian Express)would not blame you for the ideas therein because on your own you are incapable of even essaying that. You and your mother are both apt draft readers. But since for record sake you are given as the author let me clarify on it.

You are talking of processes-urbanization, globalization and you missed Industrialization though that’s the main gel that is significant in the example you gave namely: of the cart and the car. You must realize that thanks to the British India was kept out of industrialization process and prodded to jump into urbanization. This suited the British’s policy. Had we gone into the sequential stage wise growth then industrialization of the country would not have spread pauperization of the rural. And there would not have been this wide spread of slums. The rural areas were overlooked even in basics and the small towns that the ‘sahibs ‘resided saw a proliferation of slums-the unskilled labor. The poverty stricken rural folks who had to migrate to the towns to become cheap labor-head load workers for cotton and jute bales. It is this jump from rural to urban missing the industrialization that enabled you to give the example of a cart and car. We have the latest cars on your road speeding fast and we have the bullock carts jogging along. Why this scenario?

Worse still was the policy of an English education system because the ‘sahibs’ had to understand the local employees. While the other countries were industrialized with our raw materials we remained where we were-rural vastly. But time ticked and the nation was sucked into the vortex of urbanization. The government mostly of your Party quickened the process by putting in facilities in urban centers.

Globalization is facilitated by communication technology. To repeat your examples-Why is it that the rubber from our country is not processed in India and had to go to Germany? Why the metal mined in Bellary need to go to Japan to be processed and shipped by Korea. So you see how our political culture was such that they kept the country under developed as far as technology was concerned but entered into pacts with the foreign countries of course with kickback to process our raw materials.

You still think that you belong to ‘poor India’ but you and your mother jet across. Our hospitals are not good enough for the family,our transport system not powered enough so jets from the Arab world and from the filthy rich of the ‘globalized is alone good for you. You think Indians are at your disposal. You fail to realize that the policy followed by the Congress-the party of yours and you are one of its General Secretaries is the root cause of this great divide-of having carts and latest model cars on the road side by side. Co-existence I suppose.

So in this process it is natural that the voiceless, asset less and powerless are left behind. But then it gives you ample space for sermonizing to them of the ‘green pastures’ that await the poor and the humble. And typical of you that’s how you have signed off ‘Globalization excludes as much as it includes’ by bringing in compassion. Of course you have mentioned a sentence on justice and rights but that should have been the main central theme. This patronizing attitude is killing and reveals a mindset that is not upholding justice and rights. The people of this country have been in the process of globalization denied justice and rights. It is not the Food security of the National Advisory Council that we need. It is not the compassion that we are lacking. Indian hoary past is seeped in compassion and patience and that’s one of the reasons why people like you can utter nonsense and fool the people. We want our rights-we want justice and towards this be it the cart and the car examples we will not any more tolerate the sermon being thrust down on us. What is good for those who are excluded should be good for you and your mother/So do not run away and holiday and celebrate b’days in UK but eat two rotis in a dalit house and sermonize of the ‘excluded’ in the process of globalization to prove that you belong to the ‘poor India’. This is adding insult to injury. Have you and your party any idea of the concept of Justice? If so then why in the same news paper we had the article on ‘Government goes extra kilometer for Congress in UP’ Rural basic facility of road the majority needs to be in Congress constituencies.

How different are you from the invaders and the British who squeezed the rural poor. Your constituency of Amethi has been sanctioned 25 projects in contrast to just one project sanctioned for Pilibit represented by Varun Gandhi-a 75 lakh Rs for 1.8 km of rural road. Are the poor and the powerless in Pilibit different from those in Amethi? Did you peep into a dalit house in Pilibit? This basic discrimination right from our planned development period cannot see Justice as part of globalization and Industrialization. The cart will always be there along with the speeding latest cars because we have people like you-nay we have a Congress party seeped in vested interest and greed. A party which abets scams one per day at least. And you talk of ‘compassion’ Can you have compassion without Justice and can you empower people without pauperizing them? Yes change challenges –only if Justice is at the core of your perception. Rights of others are as important as your own-There is no two opinion of that but your party and you believe only in words-hollow they sound and now these infuriated the people because they see it as a foolery game.(Tell Digvijaya Singh to be silent for some time he is causing more harm than good for the party).For this to be realistic you  must be able to realize what it is to be asset less and powerless. Do not sit in an ivory tower and talk of compassion like the priest who sermonizes to the hungry congregation Sunday after Sunday and reminds them that the hungry will have their fill in the next world while he then goes back and consumes a sumptuous breakfast.

 

Dr Mrs Hilda Raja,

Vadodara

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