OPINION

In 1993, after a long hiatus, the city had in place a popular government. BJP leader Madanlal Khurana became Chief Minister, the first to occupy the chair after the assembly was dissolved in 1956.

The 1990s was also the time when mosquito driven ailment Dengue started to make its formidable presence in the city. Khurana’s cabinet had a young medical professional, Dr Harshvardhan, as Health Minister. In the midst of one of those early Dengue waves, Delhi government had issued a notification asking the schools to replace skirts with trousers for the girl students to cover their legs.

This led to a hue and cry with rights groups pointing out that it was a move towards the saffronisation of education. The government was at pains to point out that Aedes aegypti, the dengue and other related fever causing virus attacked during morning hours and in the lower portion of the body, thus the precaution advisory. But there weren’t many takers for it.

On the first working day of this year that is January 3, 2022, the city was brought to a grinding halt by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) protesting against the new excise policy of Delhi Government. Those on roads that much cursed city’s opposition for having taken up an ‘irrelevant’ issue.

For Delhi Government, which has made spending beyond its income, a liberal excise policy help to keep the cash box clinging. With the Municipal Corporation polls round the corner, BJP has drawn a strategy to up the ante on the liquor issue and oppose Delhi Government’s liberal excise policy.

The new excise policy has a social context and a social concern too. Would it see a rerun of 1990s when the liquor propelled studs ran amuck in the city? There were several instances like the infamous BMW case, Jessical Lal case, which all had a late night liquor party as part of the script.

The Kejriwal government has moved out of liquor sale licensing out 849 liquor vends to private firms through open tendering under its new excise policy. So far, over 550 liquor stores have been opened in many parts of the city while rest are coming up.

Some of these liquor shops however have come up in close proximity to educational institutions and places of worship. The municipal corporations of Delhi, which are controlled by the BJP, have closed down several liquor shops over alleged violations of Master Plan and other norms.

For the past one year, the hoardings on all roads leading to the suburbs of the national Capital falling in Uttar Pradesh displayed the achievements of the UP government. It’s estimated that vehicles in lakhs cross borders into the neighbouring Gautam Budha Nagar (Noida) and Ghaziabad districts.

These hoardings were of course hired by Uttar Pradesh government to target these daily travelers who are not restricted to just the two districts above. At least a million people cross over on a daily-basis from UP into the national Capital for work.

They come, in addition to Noida and Ghaziabad, from the districts of Baghpat, Shamli, Meerut, Hapur, Amroha, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Hathras and Mathura. That’s more than half of the 15 districts, which makes up politically volatile western Uttar Pradesh.

The dust is settling down since the withdrawal of the protesters  from the Delhi borders against the three farm laws – Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act; Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm services Act and Essential Commodities(Amendment) Act. It is the opportune time for a thorough scanning and debating the utility or futility of agricultural reforms with an eye on the farm stress, squeezing incomes and large scale economic disparities, particularly of the vast majority of kisans standing in the last in the queue to somehow hang on to catch the development train, in a comparatively calm environment.

There is no denying the fact that the farmers enjoy a high political, socio-cultural and emotional value in the context of increasing fragmentation of the society and politics. Agri-reforms are hard to be deferred also because the speed of India’s social, economic, cultural and urban development will continue to be obstructed by the uneven growth of the rural and urban sectors.

So the lockdown, for all practical purposes, is here again; lockdown for the office-going, law-abiding and such other people. The protocols issued by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has put the shackles and one is back to doing what one does best in such situation – scroll up and down on the screen of the phone.

This being the festive season of polls, the pop-ups on the screen is full of political messages. And it would not be out of place to say that technology–enabled history rewriting is playing the biggest villain of Indian society, including politics.

Howsoever you may not want it, one ends up being members of WhatsApp groups which have the roots in the caste, region and language. And there starts the lessons in Indian history from ancient, to medieval and modern. Given the reporter’s itch, the writer habitually ends up reading these discourses and if nothing else pull own hair with dismay and disgust.

By the way of being a born Brahmin, in recent times one has received a video clip of how Akhilesh Yadav badmouths Brahmins. It related to probably his days as Chief Minister where he is shown reprimanding a doctor, who happened to be Brahmin. The source of the video needs no guessing, and soon there were counters and counter-counters, and then one lost the count of the Brahmin-bashing videos of every hue and ilk. There must persecution stories floating for other castes too.