Almost all the posts I’m seeing online right now are written by dudes blaming liberals for not joining in their joyous victory right now. Some guys even take it a step further and litter their writing with threats and emotional manipulation! But, what is mental health to a right winger? Like climate change, mental health or misogyny doesn’t really exist in the Indian right wing’s mind. These are not ‘facts,’ these are ‘feelings!’
And right wing dudes really know how to show that brawn, unlike us fragile liberals who constantly keep talking about social inequality. But I don’t understand how all these guys simultaneously claim to be ‘intellectuals’ yet hurl insults like ‘bhakts?’ I mean, if we’re so sophisticated, sitting in armchairs away from ‘regular, everyday India,’ what’s a little sophisticated name-calling, guys?
At least its not rape threats and calling women unspeakable things. Is that how you rejoice your supposed connectedness to Bharat? “This will happen again in 2024!” screams the person who has really no idea about ‘facts.’
Nothing in the economy under the BJP government has worked. Nothing. The markets kept doing well, the money for small infrastructure projects kept making promoters rich. When we needed tax cuts, the corporations got a benefit of that too. Demonetization killed our financial governance, speaking of which, does the RBI even exist anymore or are they just the finance ministry’s pet?
Many government regulated industries are doing badly – banking, telecom and aviation have all been irreversibly damaged. Were they damaged under the UPA government? Absolutely. But are they also damaged under the BJP government? Absolutely.
But, leave it to a right wing dude to tell you how those two ‘facts’ can’t coexist. As if somehow the unemployment, the widening wealth gap, the gender/religion/caste-based violence has not affected them at all this term. And I wonder why.
There are really concerning reasons why the BJP won again. Their promotion engine is powered by an unprecedented amount of cash. I mean, I was getting ads for Modi Caps on Facebook at some point. That’s just an offer you can’t refuse! Where are the liberals now? These sophisticated armchaired people probably don’t even like caps. They probably want their heads to feel the increasing heat of global warming. Pathetic.
So, every dude and dudette ignoring all these hard ‘facts’ is basically quoting historical ‘facts’ to say how everyone else in Indian politics sucks and they should not be voted for either. Modi is the only person who has emerged as a successful leader of the Indian people and must be voted into power again! But what happened in the past is, quite literally, in the past.
Why am I supposed to rejoice in the current dysfunctional government’s win over the past dysfunctional government? How does that justify us choosing a future that we lived through in the last 5 years, saying, “yup, this works?”
Therefore, I leave you with this – name-calling is hardly the problem. The abuse and bullying in school that almost every Indian goes through, which we do nothing about (because mental health is not a thing remember?) should prepare us for a little bit of name-calling, right? I mean take your own advice and “man up,” after all, your side is doing worse than calling us liberals names. Just to be clear, the only thing worse is death. They kill activists and journalists, just to be clear.
Let’s focus on local governance. We need to start getting involved in the local communities we live in. We need to vote for candidates who stand for the things we need to get fixed in our communities. We have to step out of this party allegiance culture where somehow we write our names down in a cult and can never leave. Start voting for real candidates and not a face like Modi, who has individually done nothing for this country. Nothing in this world is created by a single person.
If we need actual progress, then economic and social policies need to be made by people who understand exactly what is going wrong within local communities. Rallying behind a single leader and a single party is almost the same as chasing after a godman. But we love to do that in India, don’t we?
Its time we actually do well in the economy. I mean, I feel really left out being a liberal with no armchair. I pay my taxes like anyone else, is there an intellectual armchair quota I am not aware of? Maybe I’m doing this whole thing wrong.