Delight and Disgust

The merits and demerits of the consequences of both vision and mission are evaluated by people in general and pundits in particular mostly by hindsight. The script of India’s much glorified Constitution owes it to the vision of its writers while the subsequent happenings have been the mission of the successive Governments both at the Centre and in the States and Union Territories in the form of their measures, unarguably causing delight to some sections in the population and disappointment, expressed as disgust to many other sections. Knowledge of the level of rocket science is not needed to be clear about the identity and profile of these two sections, portraying one aspect of the land’s diversity, hurting its stability, if not unity, which has got fractured due to various factors, particularly the sway of politicos whose spokespersons are preoccupied wholetime making public speeches that impress only their gullible hirelings, whose number is rising to appalling proportions, majority being the country’s youth.

The defence of various measures, introduced as Acts and Amendments to the Constitution by the top brass in administration is marked by the claims to correcting some of the wrongs of the past, invoking the land’s chequered history. One of the wrongs, namely unbecoming conduct by one section of the past generations towards the other section, dictated by social hierarchy, was focussed upon in the vision of the then Constitution writers.

The desire to have an assured livelihood and also a reasonably comfortable life in happy and peaceful ambience cannot be denied to anybody. Digging into the pages of history, the unmistakable impression one gets is that the people of past generations created an unsavoury scenario by hogging opportunities for both livelihood and life’s happiness by virtue of their lineage in particular and other factors in general, unarguably a monumental wrong. The policy, as decided by the authors of the Constitution seven decades ago, of correcting that wrong, amounts to putting the clock back as it were. The intent of the policy has its unquestionable merit, but the measures based on that noble policy seem to be wanting in finesse.

One cannot be faulted to draw an analogy to the aforementioned wrong by people of past generations, namely the ancestors of people following a certain faith committing atrocious acts while ruling the land for nearly two centuries. At the end of the day, the mission of correcting past wrongs based on vision of the Constitution writers is a matter of delight for one section and disgust to the rest.