India is in for a change.

India is in for a change.


The last time it was ready for a change - there were no people to take forward the change as India was not liberated then. It was a democracy yet to emerge out of the monarchial style of the British Rule. 


I recall the time during JP Movement as I was 12 years in a small town, Dhanbad. All the various agitations, public events would be held in a few select towns. That was a call for Total Change for a truly Democratic Governance.

Media at that time was led by editors who except for doing a hard job on social cruelties, would wear a haloed cloak of moral guardians of the Nation of India, and therefore became very natural partners of the corrupt Governance. And I dont 

think any media except for Indian Express wrote ever against Indira Gandhi then. Being educated or civilised at that time was for a greater cause of making Indian democracy look alive and real before the nations of the world.

BBC News was preferred as that was the only international network having its own correspondents based in India. They were smart though. All they had to do was add some bitter truths to an otherwise humble Indian story. They then got a stamp of authentic and best final word!

The environment has changed now - with more correspondents from the international Press having their presence in India, and the Internet connecting people directly.

Yet the tradition carries of expressing with a Caution: do not dilute the image of India as an evolving, lively democracy!

In 1974 all those strategies and scientific theories failed, as the unbeatable was brought to the ground. 

Indira Gandhi lost to a handful of unknown or blokes out of the wood. That is where it stopped.

As the cause had not run deep. It was a call against a dictatorial regimented administration, unmanageable prices and extreme poverty. Corruption had not damaged the Indian education system, business ethos, social culture or the common man's daily life. It had just begun to divert the attention from preserving sense values to attaining material wealth quicker.

A whole new generation has since then saw falsehood of practices and beliefs. An evolving new generation is cut against immoral money making. They are more sure about their levels of education, skills and have a wider range of opportunities. They have gone beyond a stage of desperateness to be one up. They are now reconciled to be the one among.  

In many ways India is repeating that period. Public angst is at its peak. A view against the public angst is considered pro-Government, and therefore exploitative. And the call for change is certain and resolute.

Yet the canvass is very different.

The advantage India has at this time is that it is not limited by options. It has many more new people with more open and wiser thinking both at the political and administrative levels, and many more beyond the coterie of touts and agents. I am also reminded of the period during which India changed at the economic level post 1991, when an entire generation of business owners, professionals and executives in the private sector became archaic and a new force replaced them - yes, at a risk of how well they would drive as a raw, novice debutant, but they did that with an aplomb.

I have a feeling 2015 will see India with many faces and names out of the public reckoning. Some stalwarts would pay a huge price. Many who believe they have a lifetime security may just yield to lifelong penance, and several braving the winds would sink into time never known. Sad that a large number of such people may yet be at their prime age. But the sin knows not justice for the sinner.

Yet for everyone of those who may turn sacrificial, there is likely to be a whole new breed wanting to take another course. If that is the end, every means and process to attain that is gracious, magnanimous and adorable!