The Streets are Alive with the Sound of Citizens

Supine for over a decade,  the Republic shows hints of a spine.

It should be no matter for now what colour  the  vertebrae are–red, saffron, or just an all-encompassing  white.

Nor what be the questions being asked so long  as asked they  are.

A people  who have remained drugged with slogans,  fearful of reprisals,  dwarfed into cult worshippers,   held in unreasoning thrall  by subliminal hate, mesmerised by false gods have found tongue again.

The  duped  young, reaching the tipping point, have  burst the  bubble of  chicanery and  authoritarian fiat.

Those who have enslaved the nation’s psyche in the name of  one overarching deity , having been found  complicit  in sacrilegious loot in the sanctum sanctorum, suddenly find themselves without the  magic trick they have so  employed and abused for  years on end.

Falsehoods  deployed on  mendacious media channels  have come to be challenged by  daring new  citizens, and the usual suspects are without recourse except to bluster, sophistry, what-abouttery   but obfuscating mayhem no longer seems to have the traction it has been used  to having.

A young political  leader, reviled  day in and day out by   apprehensive   state  satraps,  has remained  unshakeable tethered to the truth of his perceptions and the power of   unsparing argument.

The Republic looks to him and the many hundreds of thousands that  make his questioning  consequential,  —truly the man who stands on the burning deck, as it were.

He has credibility because he plays no favourites, condemning wrong doing in his own quarters as forthrightly as in the ever deflective official  camp.

The cockroaches are everywhere, as they always are in every nook and cranny, regardless of  political  colour in any kitchen sink  or washroom.

The honourable Chief Justice has done the republic a historic favour unbeknown to himself.

Great men’s contributions  have always been such, and the  feisty new Republic must thank him for his prescient  contribution.

Of curse, Bharati cockroaches are expectedly  born with  ngyan (wisdom), unlike their upstart counterparts  in parvenu nations here and there.

So the posers they have  articulated  have been hard to side-step.

A time may come when  they will argue that no educational issues may ever be amenable to  piecemeal remedy, but require  an overhaul of  the t source from whence ideological pathways to learning are formulated.

For now,  let questioning, and  Gandhian insistence  on truthful answers and just remedies reign the public mind and heart; and let the resolve never again to be taken in  by any false constructs  of god,  nation, or dharma  (ethics) remain unshaken.

No cockroach is ever violent, unlike a bug or a mosquito.

Cockroaches only look for  a morsel to eat and a corner to settle in.

Those that seek to quash them with pellet guns seem too frightened  to face their failures.

And, however crushed,  cockroaches are never eradicated.

Indeed, they are now joined by droves of  the Alpha variety, protesting lack of drinking water, clean toilets, rotten mi-day meals, and zero teacher recruitment in school after school.

Nor are “we the people”, however stupefied  for a month, a  year,  a decade, even a  cruel epoch   likely to be  laid low for all times to come, regardless of the grand telos of 2047 when India has been decreed to be due to achieve full “development” (read American style murderous capitalism).

So, here is to   “we the people” as they gather the intent and the courage to take back what they gave to the Republic and what must always be theirs .

The cockroaches ask: how is it that Bharat is third on the lit of international  billionaires but has not one university or any other institution of higher learning or research among the world’s top hundred?  Or is it two hundred?

How is it that  one  lakh schools have only one teacher,  more than one lakh have no washrooms, no electrity connections,  more than a lakh where  children  are  served  gruel more  watery  than ever was served to  orphans in the brutal workhouses in early nineteenth century England  (read  Oliver Twist), often with  an infusion of vermin in the servings?

 And they ask how is it that  children are taught  distorted  histories, bereft of fact, analytical rigour, ethical concerns, verifiably  irrefutable data, indeed  bereft of allegiance to every  fundamental constitutional injunction  about promoting scientific  habits of thought and study?

And how come  employment  in  public services; railways, schools/colleges/universities , policing staff, doctors, nurses,  municipal works, what have you,  is sought to be forever  deferred  through the mechanism of leaked question papers—a stratagem that  also  allegedly  enables  millions to be illicitly made by cronies and  satraps  of the establishment?  Or,  to be handed over to private corporates who only look to their number one,

How come the guilty are neither identified nor ever held to account?

And how come accountability if and when it is forced by public outcry  remains limited to the underlings ?

And how  come  the young, Gen Alpha, Gen z , are only asked to obey and  reviled as   unpatriotic  gangsters,  opposition  moles  and stooges  etc  if they  complain ?

The cockroach is sentient and  comes  from Sanatan  (profound ancient Brahminical  wisdom) stock as well, so give the cockroach  her/ his due.

Where Sanatan  scriptures and mythological tales are so replete with stories of animal agents, be they  birds, fish,  monkeys, tigers, even serpents, the cockroach too must have a place in the pantheon.

And  these  cockroaches  have with them not just the blessings but the  solidarity of  parents and avuncular  supporters who have thus far happily voted for king and wazir.

No longer may the  Instagram  do the beguiling trick, nor parliament fall into obedient  rut, nor direct   Bonapartist  addresses to the hoi polloi   delivered with theatrical  aplomb capture the popular mind any more.

So much the better for Bh

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