@ni5arga Can you check if the vote count can be manipulated in real time on the E C site?
It would be a patriotic thing to do as it could save the mother of democracy.
The Maharashtra government clears mining project, says not in tiger area, map shows otherwise.
It received forest clearance on April 15 and environment clearance on May 12, a day before it was exempted from obtaining wildlife clearance.
It was mid-2022. The country was still shaking off COVID. Nobody quite knew if the worst was behind us. And the political mood everywhere was the same, a kind of resigned certainty. "Waste of time, brother. Ram Mandir opens in early 2024. Elections in April. It is going to be a sweep."
Back then, I had just been made in charge of the war room for the Karnataka Assembly elections. I was wondering where we would find the courage, the technique, the language to push back against a narrative that had been years n the making.
That was when I 1st heard he had decided to walk.
Across the entire length and breadth of this country. On foo
My first thought, honestly, was, not a great idea!
His close advisers said the same. Too cumbersome. Too dangerous. Someone even proposed a hybrid-walk some of it, take vehicles for the rest. He refused every suggestion. He had one belief: that truth, when it moves on foot and looks people in the eye, will communicate what no war room ever can.
I want to tell you about one day during that walk.
Through some logistical error, the camp was erected around four kilometres ahead of the designated end point. It was hot. It was humid. The yatris who had arrived earlier were already resting.
When he reached the camp and realised what had happened, he didn't say a word. He turned back and kept walking. 4 kms. No one is ahead of him. No crowd. No cameras making a moment of it. Just a man, a road, and a principle he refused to compromise on even when no one was watching.
That image has never left me.
Now, Prof Ramachandra Guha has been writing about Rahul Gandhi's shortcomings with remarkable dedication for years. Pages and pages. Column after column. From someone who claims to be disillusioned, the output is almost impressive in its volume.
If he is truly irrelevant, truly finished, truly a lost cause, someone should ask Mr Guha why he cannot stop writing about him.
Mr Guha once wrote seriously about what it means to be an honest intellectual in a democracy. Noam Chomsky made a point that cuts close to home here, the most dangerous intellectual is not the one on anyone's payroll, but the one who arrives, through apparently careful analysis, at exactly the conclusion those in power find most convenient.
We are 10 years into something serious in ths country. Institutions that should be independent are not. Newsrooms that once asked hard questions now ask different ones. Dissent is treated as disruption.
Many of the people now writing sharp pieces about RG's leadership once wrote sharp pieces about exactly this machinery. They were right then. The question worth asking is, what changed?!
Let me be plain about what this moment actually is for us.
This is not an election cycle. This is a war b/w two visions of what this country is and who it belongs to.
One vision believes this country is for everybody. That its diversity is not a problem to be managed but a truth to be celebrated. The other operates on fear & hierarchy, with a precision and discipline that Mr Guha, from his comfortable cocoon, seems to find more analytically interesting than morally troubling.
Mr Guha can remain on his pedestal of privilege. That is his right.
But millions of people who have no such luxury, who live with the consequences of this moment every single day, have already made their judgement. They are following the one person they know will never leave their side. The one person they know will fight this till the end.
Not because he is perfect. Not because he wins every battle. But because he is the one person who walks kilometres when no one is watching.
History will record ths moment. It will record who stood where when the fire was visible & the smoke was being diagnosed. It will record who had the courage to walk & who had the comfort to write. It will record the millions who followed a man into uncertainty because they trusted his spine more than they feared the road ahead.
Truth does not need a column!