Samikhsya Bureau
Watching politics of the day and the slew of sloganeering of new kinds, there can be little doubt that, willingly or otherwise, there is a subtle attempt at disguising real delivery in the garb of such diversions.
‘One nation, one language’, ‘one nation, one I card’, ‘one nation, one voice’ ….in fact, it can go on and on to extend itself it can .
Lightly speaking it can be tomorrow anything that fits into the convenience of a dispensation regardless of the collective choice of the people. May be, it is not far when it can be, One Nation, one religion, or one nation one political party or one man, and nobody else, one nation, one thought, one nation, one bank, such paradigmatic shifts cannot be ruled out.
Recently, in a musical reality show, to be on air shortly, a fresh coinage reads ‘one nation, one voice’. Which has a subtle undertone to pander to a specific vanity.
It has been a long journey for the common man traversing through the tracks which began several years ago when the Voter I card was upheld to be mandatory and most sacrosanct proof of one’s identity as a citizen.
Then it was the introduction of Adhaar card, which was made compulsory like a legal diktat subsequently to become a rule in the midst of wide contrarian views.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, the ghost of Adhaar has been made the mandate one has to abide by from the cradle to the grave.
The seers in politics do not know the hardships the majority face in their pursuit for this thing called Adhaar, now revered as the end-card of a life . To get an Adhaar card for a child, of five or six years old , the man or woman at the designated window asks for a Id proof for the child even if you produce the date of birth proof and the child itself and yourself as parents.
The officer with all her or his vanity in eyes, quickly suggests to get the child’s identity attested by a gazetted rank officer. It is not hard to imagine how the couple would manage such an attestation from an officer! Tomorrow it can be a DNA test also ! It is the common man who is always at the receiving end. Because he is never a part of a consensus where the doors are slammed on his nose.
One can imagine the traumatic impacts of such negative external stimulus in addition to the skeptical queries from the officer and one’s physical and mental fatigue of frequenting the Adhaar centre and waiting for hours.
Today’s politics in India is fraught with people who volunteer themselves to be either secular saints or show up as harbingers of the national conscience or they are the only torch bearers of political good sense.
All that goes on, triggering debates in the media, helping the real issues to get cloaked in the garb of one-ness.
(Cartoon courtesy The Times of India archive)
