Indira Gandhi remembered

 This is in response to an article on Indira Gandhi, her assassination and her imposition of Emergency
in the 70s.  Brief comments on some aspects of IG:
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The article on IG is excellent, I must say.  While you have talked about her assassination, you have
not identified the reason leading up to that sad event as another case in point, demonstrative IG's
courage and determination.  She would have probably applied the same rule to deal with Kashmir
and Maoists.  But it is also a sad fact that she had as much to do with the creation of Bhindranwale
as anyone else, so she sowed the seeds of tragedy herself.  Now, going back to our Literature days,
it is pretty easy to identify IG as a Shakespearean tragic heroine, in the same mould as Macbeth,
Hamlet et al.  She had everything in her  to become probably the best PM we have ever had and achieve
much more during her life time, but she did have the tragic flaws you have talked about, which limited
her accomplishments.

Re emergency, I am walking out on a limb, I know, when I say that probably Indians deserve a somewhat
benign dictator.  While we can boast of being the largest democracy and of holding successful (??) elections
frequently, the fact remains that ours is a flawed version of democracy where the politicians are running
rampant with their dens of corruption and lawlessness, bringing all institutions into various degrees of
disrepute.  It has come to such a pass that we feel ashamed that we dont have a good candidate we can vote
for, most of the times.  You have to choose among the evils and settle for the least evil demon to vote for.
Under the circumstances, if something like an emergency is clamped by a benign (this is indeed the operative
word) dictator and he/she works towards cleaning up the mess we have created in the name of democracy,
I would be all for it.  Yes, some of the `extreme' liberties one has today (like destroying public property during
protests, throwing mikes/chairs inside an assembly, accumulating personal wealth by lining one's pockets with
public funds, going on strikes for the flimsiest of reasons etc) might be
taken away or dealt with more severely, but then such things dont matter to law-abiding men-on-the-street
anyway, so long as the ability to protest lawfully is not withdrawn.

This is like talking of political discontent in Singapore.  I was chatting once with a couple of Singaporean
Members of Parliament (one from a Tamil party and another from Lee's party).  While the Tamil MP was saying
Lee was a benign dictator, who meant well but did not allow for complete freedom for other parties to `express'
themselves on some issues, the other MP said with the kind of education levels prevailing in Singapore (at that
time i.e. around the early 80's), they needed very stringent guidelines for people to follow.   Some guiding hand
was necessary so that people dont go berserk in the name of freedom and democracy.

That is exactly what we need in India and I long for someone like IG with a lot more faith in himself/herself to come
through and be that guiding hand for Indians.  Otherwise, we will get completely overwhelmed by the corrosive
greed of politicians and others of their ilk.

I know journalists like you and others who want democracy to be completely absolute will not subscribe to the above,
but then I am a common man who desires that the cancer afflicting our country gets excised and quickly.  Do we know
another, more effective way of achieving this??