Change India On the Move

CHASING A CONSTANT CALLED CHANGE

Change is the new buzzword. As Election 2014 comes calling, Governance Now goes to where the action is – the heart and the hinterland, the city and its bazaars – to map out India’s transformations.

The Road Map

Change: The only constant

Change is the new buzzword. Change, of course, is also the only constant in life – more so in a young democracy and kaleidoscopic society that India is. But of late there has been altogether too much of this ‘constant’. Unlike the Dickensian “the best of times, the worst of times, the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness”, we are living in the changing times – for better or worse.

The crucial point is, India seems to be living in times that are not superficially, routinely transformative but substantively so. The Delhi election results, for example, might be just a surface effect of varied churnings going on below the radar – with a dash of “the spring of hope, the winter of despair” depending on your viewpoint.

In these churnings, in this paradigm of shifts, conventional narratives are being replaced by new arguments and discourses from non-traditional social and political forces. Add to it the demographic shift towards a majority of youth: a new generation of young Indians is highly impatient with anything that symbolises status-quo-ism.

This change, in all its semantic shades, is the theme of our special issue as we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the publication that you, discerning readers, have helped create its own niche. In the following pages, you will have great minds debating the arc of this change.

But we also realise that a changing India is too large – and too important – a theme to be covered in a single edition. So, we plan to further understand and capture this change by undertaking a cross-country journey. Because we feel random surveys of metropolises cannot capture the transformational drives, nor can parachuting into a proverbially nondescript village for a few hours give an authentic narrative of these alterations.

One of the aims of this admittedly ambitious and unique project is to find out if there is a gap between aspirations and yearnings of people living in cosmopolitan cities and in semi-urban or rural places. Has technology reduced that gap as much as it is claimed? Similarly, the impact of free-market policies and resultant social changes in semi-urban centres would be a key to understanding the future conduct of a largely urbanised India in less than three decades.

The interesting part of this journey would be to make a detailed survey of the younger generation, their aspirations and dilemmas, and find out responses of top political executives and opinion-makers about the ongoing changes. In all states through which our journey passes, we would make an attempt to connect the youth with the top political and civil leadership to encourage a new debate. The whole exercise, needless to say, will have no political bias and remain focused solely as an exploratory mission to understand the impact of changing India.

New Stories

Vadra's business, Modi's wife: Nothing personal about it

Ajay Singh | April 25 2014

Let there be more public scrutiny of ‘private life’ of our political leaders

Mahatma Gandhi once said “my life is my message”. This formulation implied that there must not be duplicity in public and private life. A public life should be transparent and crystal clear, not opaque. In following this principle Gandhi was prepared to face all the controversy over his brahmacharya experiment. He never ducked criticism, faced it squarely and explained his position. He in fact encouraged criticism and asked his colleagues to leave him if they did not have faith in him. Unfortunately, Gandhi has been branded as a saint by cleverly politicians to prevent public scrutiny of their own lives.

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Varanasi turns saffron as Modi files nomination

Deevakar Anand | Varanasi | April 24 2014

On Thursday morning in Varanasi it was difficult not to let one’s mind get besieged with Modi's popularity

On Thursday the city of Varanasi came to a complete standstill. And if there was one thing that could move or, say, crawl amidst a tsunami of people on the roads, it was the convoy of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

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Rahul set to win Amethi, yet lose some sheen

Deevakar Anand | AMETHI | April 24 2014

Rahul Gandhi would win LS seat a third time but by a lesser margin; BJP, AAP set to work their way into overall voter disgruntlement

In Amethi, there is no palpable ‘Modi wave’ OR ‘BJP lehar’. Nor do the voters here identify themselves much with the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) anti-corruption pitch.

In contrast, the Gandhi family still evokes emotional support among the residents.

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Rajnath's rivals surrendered before the battle

Ajay Singh | Etawah | April 22 2014

But BJP president takes “mere formality” seriously, reaches out to small social groups

As a student of physics in the Gorakhpur university, BJP president Rajnath Singh must have learnt Newton's Laws by rote. But as a practitioner of realpolitik, he would certainly have wished to reformulate the law on action and reaction.

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Mulayam's village reveals chinks in his armour

Ajay Singh | Etawah | April 22 2014

Saifai is moving from politics of loyalty to silent revenge

As one drives down Mathura to Etah and Etawah, one sees a vast expanse of treacherous and arid geography falling alongside the Yamuna and Chambal rivers that is regarded as the land of perpetual war. Mythologies and histories have shaped the psyche of people who are often driven by primal instincts and emotions.

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