India Shastra is a collection of 100 articles and essays of the writer and politician Shashi Tharoor. A
portrait of contemporary India, which takes into account the dramatic
change in Indian politics with the rise to power of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party. An excerpt from the book.
I landed in Romania on Gandhi Jayanti - the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, October 2, 2014 - Bucharest attend and address the Forum, only to be greeted by a barrage of messages. The Prime Minister had been trying to reach me while I was in the air. While traveling and uncontactable, the prime minister had gone ahead and announced his invitation to me to join a group of nine prominent Indian campaign to promote its new Clean India (Bharat Abhiyan SWACHH). Some in the media, inevitably, they were trying to provoke a controversy: I was the only politician, and worse, the only member of Congress in your list. What portends this? Was defect to the BJP? Would it be furious if I accepted my party?
I had the honor, of course, for the invitation. What worthy of the name Indian humbled he not is used by the Prime Minister for a national cause? ... Clean India would benefit all of us, and I was delighted, in principle, to support the initiative of Prime Minister. At the same time, as I also said in accepting his invitation, I'm not a fan of formality, and I was worried the campaign would fall to symbolic photo opportunities tycoons who never touch a brush again after 2 October.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2015/1/book_640px_img2.jpgBook: Reflections India Shastra on the nation in our timeAuthor: Shashi Tharoor; Aleph; Rs 695; 473 PP.
Clean India is a great idea of the campaign, but the real challenge will be to keep more than a week of photo shoots. The prime minister asked those who joined him in launching the campaign in Rajpath to take a pledge to "remain committed to cleaning and taking time for this," and that "neither garbage nor let others away. " That promise must be honored, not only for a week, but every day for the rest of our lives.
As the Congress Party, which initially reacted with maturity the announcement, with the former minister Rajiv Shukla denouncing speculation rather silly 'Tharoor inching towards the BJP' ... Later, however, the party decided that Prime Minister, given his somewhat confrontational campaign style was the wrong person to embrace a cause of Gandhi: Mahatma had always insisted that means and ends are pursued with the same spirit. As I also remembered the prime minister in Twitter, the idea of Mahatma cleaning was not only literal: he also spoke of a clean heart, soul and spirit, and so a campaign on her birthday would have done well to follow an Indian also cleaned of intolerance, sectarian hatred and communal violence, and clean streets.
At the same time, I was aware of interest delivered by Mr. Modi on sanitation. Occasionally a story slips through the network media could have received more attention in a different time. With all the media in mid-July focused on the budget (and budget train before it), it paid little attention to an intriguing element left the agenda of the meeting the prime minister.
A week before the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Budget 2014 for the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Modi Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met in Delhi ... But what I found most surprising - and deserves much more attention the media gave him - it was the news that the key question Modi Sandberg asked India to help with sanitation was.
Public hygiene was of course one of the issues the candidate Narendra Modi had raised in his campaign speeches, and featured some of the issues raised by the elected prime minister in his first public speech after his victory Varanasi. Many will remember the reaction he received from his usual supporterson the Hindu right when he declared a few months before his victory, echoing Congress minister Jairam Ramesh, the bathrooms were more important to him than temples.
... .In The face of it, it is a strange request. But the prime minister confirmed that arose in his Facebook post: India intends, he said, "to commemorate birth anniversary 150th of Mahatma Gandhi [2019] with a focus on cleanliness and spoke with Ms. Sandberg how Facebook can help us in this effort, "... there is not much detail in Sandberg offer itself. . Indeed, she publicized the meeting on Facebook ... Recall also that the SWACHH Bharat campaign is an attempt PM Modi to give new impetus to a national effort by successive governments - which has failed to achieve its objectives for the year. It was the Congress party that gave the nation a Rural Sanitation Program, which in 1999 was changed to the first NDA government to Total Sanitation Campaign with equally modest results. The UPA government in 2012 subsumed that Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan in, with the aim of making open defecation free nation by 2022. Modiji, who acknowledged the work of previous governments, has advanced the deadline for the UPA for three years, and given the visibility nationwide effort that sanitation has not enjoyed before. ... The participation of staff PM, your Twitter, your Walk and reach out to nine Indians intend to raise national awareness of the campaign. I remember the mass movement that brought Kerala for full literacy, as volunteers deployed to remote villages, leper colonies and tribal huts to reach the unreached. That's the kind of sustained effort needed to clean Indian.
I landed in Romania on Gandhi Jayanti - the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, October 2, 2014 - Bucharest attend and address the Forum, only to be greeted by a barrage of messages. The Prime Minister had been trying to reach me while I was in the air. While traveling and uncontactable, the prime minister had gone ahead and announced his invitation to me to join a group of nine prominent Indian campaign to promote its new Clean India (Bharat Abhiyan SWACHH). Some in the media, inevitably, they were trying to provoke a controversy: I was the only politician, and worse, the only member of Congress in your list. What portends this? Was defect to the BJP? Would it be furious if I accepted my party?
I had the honor, of course, for the invitation. What worthy of the name Indian humbled he not is used by the Prime Minister for a national cause? ... Clean India would benefit all of us, and I was delighted, in principle, to support the initiative of Prime Minister. At the same time, as I also said in accepting his invitation, I'm not a fan of formality, and I was worried the campaign would fall to symbolic photo opportunities tycoons who never touch a brush again after 2 October.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2015/1/book_640px_img2.jpgBook: Reflections India Shastra on the nation in our timeAuthor: Shashi Tharoor; Aleph; Rs 695; 473 PP.
Clean India is a great idea of the campaign, but the real challenge will be to keep more than a week of photo shoots. The prime minister asked those who joined him in launching the campaign in Rajpath to take a pledge to "remain committed to cleaning and taking time for this," and that "neither garbage nor let others away. " That promise must be honored, not only for a week, but every day for the rest of our lives.
As the Congress Party, which initially reacted with maturity the announcement, with the former minister Rajiv Shukla denouncing speculation rather silly 'Tharoor inching towards the BJP' ... Later, however, the party decided that Prime Minister, given his somewhat confrontational campaign style was the wrong person to embrace a cause of Gandhi: Mahatma had always insisted that means and ends are pursued with the same spirit. As I also remembered the prime minister in Twitter, the idea of Mahatma cleaning was not only literal: he also spoke of a clean heart, soul and spirit, and so a campaign on her birthday would have done well to follow an Indian also cleaned of intolerance, sectarian hatred and communal violence, and clean streets.
At the same time, I was aware of interest delivered by Mr. Modi on sanitation. Occasionally a story slips through the network media could have received more attention in a different time. With all the media in mid-July focused on the budget (and budget train before it), it paid little attention to an intriguing element left the agenda of the meeting the prime minister.
A week before the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Budget 2014 for the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Modi Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met in Delhi ... But what I found most surprising - and deserves much more attention the media gave him - it was the news that the key question Modi Sandberg asked India to help with sanitation was.
Public hygiene was of course one of the issues the candidate Narendra Modi had raised in his campaign speeches, and featured some of the issues raised by the elected prime minister in his first public speech after his victory Varanasi. Many will remember the reaction he received from his usual supporterson the Hindu right when he declared a few months before his victory, echoing Congress minister Jairam Ramesh, the bathrooms were more important to him than temples.
... .In The face of it, it is a strange request. But the prime minister confirmed that arose in his Facebook post: India intends, he said, "to commemorate birth anniversary 150th of Mahatma Gandhi [2019] with a focus on cleanliness and spoke with Ms. Sandberg how Facebook can help us in this effort, "... there is not much detail in Sandberg offer itself. . Indeed, she publicized the meeting on Facebook ... Recall also that the SWACHH Bharat campaign is an attempt PM Modi to give new impetus to a national effort by successive governments - which has failed to achieve its objectives for the year. It was the Congress party that gave the nation a Rural Sanitation Program, which in 1999 was changed to the first NDA government to Total Sanitation Campaign with equally modest results. The UPA government in 2012 subsumed that Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan in, with the aim of making open defecation free nation by 2022. Modiji, who acknowledged the work of previous governments, has advanced the deadline for the UPA for three years, and given the visibility nationwide effort that sanitation has not enjoyed before. ... The participation of staff PM, your Twitter, your Walk and reach out to nine Indians intend to raise national awareness of the campaign. I remember the mass movement that brought Kerala for full literacy, as volunteers deployed to remote villages, leper colonies and tribal huts to reach the unreached. That's the kind of sustained effort needed to clean Indian.
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