OPINION

January 26 became a sacrosanct day in Indian history much before India became a Republic on this day in 1950. It was on this day that the annual session of the Indian National Congress in 1930 passed the resolution of ‘Purna Swaraj’ setting for the country the goal of complete independence.

This date was chosen to proclaim ourselves as Republic in 1950 because putting our constitution into action signified, we becoming a sovereign country completely detaching ourselves from the umbilical cord of having a dominion status under the British – Purna Swaraj.

On this day 71 years later, an attempt was made to desecrate the symbol of Indian Sovereignty – the Lal Quila. I feel anguished for my Republic, as attempt at its desecration symbolizes increasing degeneration of democratic principles and dialogue becoming casualty to pursuance of narrow political goals.

In the near seven decades after the first elections were held in this country, vote alone has come to tall over every other issue in our polity. The political manifestos of contesting parties today read more like brochures of marketing firms out to grab the vote shares. The anti-farm protests too have become a casualty of political one-upmanship.

The siege of Delhi by the farmers sitting on the periphery is not the only blockade which the national Capital is facing. There is a siege within Delhi too, a fallout of the garbage politics being engaged into by rival political parties – the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

The civic employees belonging to the three corporations -- North, South and East, have gone without salaries and former employees without pension for months together, forcing them to hang their brooms. The result of this has been filth strewn all over the national Capital, threatening spread of disease thanks to poor hygienic conditions.

The non-payment of salaries is largely on the account of the failure of the Delhi Government to release adequate funds for the same. The government claims that it owed the corporations around Rs 1,200 crore as per revised estimates and of this, Rs 862 crore had been released until December. The Delhi government told the High Court last week that a sanction order of Rs 337 crore to the MCDs was passed in January for January-March 2021 and thus there was nothing pending.

“At stake were 4500 seats – about 500 for parliament, the rest for the provincial assemblies. 224,000 polling booths were constructed, and equipped with 2 million steel ballot boxes, to make which 8,200 tonnes of steel were consumed.” This extract from Ramchandra Guha’s India After Gandhi gives a landscape of the 1951 general election, the first in independent India.

After 70 plus years of proclaiming world’s largest democracy, Indian electoral system is in process of adapting to the new normal. Last year with the successful completion of Bihar state elections in middle of a raging pandemic, Election Commission of India (ECI) demonstrated its capacity and versatility to adapt and cope up with challenges in its way. But at same time, a need for reframing the voting system in India cannot be negated.

In global arena, from developed countries like the United States of America (USA) to the developing global south states, there is a constant rethink about voters' perception. The US elections in 2020 bespeak about the ambiguity of electoral politics, as highlighted by David Van Reybrouck in his book Against Elections.

He said, “If you look at how quickly populism, technocracy and anti-parliamentarism are rising, if you look at how more and more citizens are longing for participation and how quickly that desire can tip over into frustration, then you realize we are up to the neck.” This statement, when decoded in context of India, finds its validation to the case.

A year after the first anti-Covid advisory was issued by the government, the vaccination drive was launched last Saturday. Even by conservative estimates, the complete implementation of the immunity programme and rise of herd immunity could take the full year.

Thus, as aptly mentioned by some it’s just the beginning of the end. Even as we had started to breath somewhat easy about Covid being reigned in, the country is being threatened by the most devious Avian Flu or the bird flu.

For the past year in our battle against the spread of Covid, improved hygiene has been the most effective weapon. The soaps and sanitizers have been the most piercing bullets in dismembering the virus. For those now looking for ways and means to control the spread of Bird Flu, better hygiene is the only solution.

The death of water fowls from Sanjay Gandhi lake in East Delhi and the National Zoological Park, with flu-positive reports, has caused scare. The news of bird deaths, curb on the sale of poultry products and culling them en masse has been hitting the headlines. But none in the government and the media has cared to find out the condition of water bodies from where there are no reports of any death.

The fight over the legacy of Netaji, which more than the obvious, has been propelled by the gains to be made in the upcoming assembly polls in West Bengal, has inadvertently come to affect a part history integral to his heritage, which has largely gone unnoticed.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is celebrating the upcoming 125th birth anniversary of charismatic freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose as Parakaram Diwas, and the Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has contributed his bit renaming the more than 150-years-old Howrah-Kalka Mail as Netaji Express.

In a recent post on the micro-blogging site Twitter, Goyal wrote, "Netaji's Parakaram (valour) put India on the express route of freedom and development. I am thrilled to celebrate his birth anniversary with the introduction of Netaji Express." The tweet, however, did not mention that the Ministry has renamed the more than 150-year-old India’s most premier train of its time the Kalka Mail as Netaji Express.

Run by the East Indian Railway Company, the train began operation between Calcutta, then Capital of British India and Delhi in 1866 as the East Indian Railway Mail and was extended from Delhi to Kalka, in Simla foothills, in 1891, after a rail link was built from Ambala to Kalka.