In Ancient Rome there was a god called Janus, who had two heads, one looking forward towards the future, and the other looking backward towards the past.
The new Indian deity is similar. He has two heads, one looking forward in the name of 'vikaas ' ( whatever that may mean ), and the other looking backward towards restoring Ramrajya.
The problem is that these are contradictory tendencies, they cannot go together. One can either move forwards, or move backwards, but how can one simultaneously move in both directions, as our ' modern' Janus is trying to do ?
During the Lok Sabha elections only the forward looking face was revealed, and the backward looking face was effectively veiled. The constant refrain of the great man in his all his speeches could be encapsulated in just one word : 'Vikaas '. Like children following the Pied Piper of Hamelin, our gullible youth, cutting through caste and community lines, en masse voted for him, in the belief that vikaas meant that millions of jobs would be created, and ultimately what the youth want is jobs.
The problem is that this was just selling of a dream : there are few jobs, and even these are dwindling. The GDP growth of 5.7% in the quarter April to June 2014, has dropped to 5.3% in the quarter July to September 2014. Manufacturing growth is almost stagnant ( see my article ' Vikas ' on facebook and on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in ). About 1 crore new youth are pouring into the job market every year, but only about 5 lac new jobs are created annually in the organized sector of the economy ( see my article ' Unemployment in India ' on my blog ).
As mentioned in my article ' The Dream has Evaporated ' ( see on my blog ), the dream sold by our new Janus , through his aggressive, well oiled team of social media experts ( who would launch a barrage of abuses and invective against anyone daring to speak a word against him ), of vikas, or development which would provide millions of jobs, has gone with the wind, leaving behind millions of youth in the lurch, wondering what has happened to the jobs they were getting, and how much longer must they have to wait for them, instead of getting doses of swatchata, ghar wapasi, good governance day, etc ?
The truth is now slowly dawning : in fact our new Janus never had two faces at all. There was only
one real face, the one looking backward. The one looking forward was not a real face at all but only a mask, a pretence, for doing gimmicks..
So due to non delivery on his promises, our single faced Janus is bound to become increasingly unpopular day by day. Of course his party still keeps winning elections, but that is not so much because of him, but because the principal opposition party has given a walk over, by keeping a thoroughly immature and unfit person as its leader, simply because he belongs to the dynasty, and by perpetrating scam after scam when they were in power.
So now that the forward looking mask has been stripped, and all that remains is the backward looking real face, what can be expected. ? What can be expected is more communal tension, communal riots and attacks on minorities. What else does his party have ?
Hari Om
