Silent Guns

Now that the elections dates have been announced this whole tamasha of young ‘turks’ gracing the 14th Lok Sabha will finally rest. Even if Naveen Jindal, Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora and Rahul Gandhi were to lose their seats, which keeping their track record in mind shouldn’t be the case, they will never be called young guns anymore. Track record, did I say that? Oh sorry it must be their youthful exuberance that might just get their seats back for they really didn’t do anything. Did they? 

It’s no secret that these blokes got where they got thanks to the famous surnames. Agreed that they are educated, can hold a conversation, will make many a reporters (male and female variety) swoon but besides their papa’s names what else have they got to show? In the last five years they were the ones who were poised to take the country to new heights, free us from the evil perils of ageless politicians…well okay they were just supposed to raise a few points every now and then. Oh come on they were just supposed to inspire the youth of this nation to get a little more proactive. Have they succeeded? The proof of the pudding lies in the eating and now as accounts of the last five years are being closed they really don’t have anything to talk about. A recent article in the Economic Times sums up their performance in Lok Sabha and doesn’t give them high marks. 

Do we have a problem with them gracing the page three parties more than center page or front page? Do we feel like they haven’t done anything worthwhile besides being mute spectators? Is it that they couldn’t do anything or they weren’t allowed to do anything? If one looks back at what happened in the last twelve months, leave alone the other four years of the government’s tenure, none of these so called young guns fired. Take the Mangalore pub attack; none of them said anything, no reactions. They are fine with the idea of pubbing themselves as it’s a ‘normal’ thing to do and by god they are normal aren’t they but when it comes to making a statement they just refuse to speak up. Let’s take the overnight sacking of the Jet employees. Nothing. The only time one of them said something was in the aftermath of the 26/11 Bombay attacks. There too Mr. Rahul Gandhi quoted the obvious to death. Well I don’t blame him. Considering that that his sister was watching the proceedings from the gallery and he had to retort to rhetoric of the attack being aimed at every Indian and not just the unlucky few who were in the direct line of fire. 

Do we really place too much emphasis on the youth? A Barack Obama is just forty-eight and so he can get a fresh perspective. If that be the stupid assumption then Gandhi (38), Jindal (38), Scindia (37), Deora (33) and Pilot (32) should be the solution to all our problems. Wait they are just the Congress...hmm…and mummy Sonia doesn’t let them talk unless they are talking about Rajiv Gandhi or the party. Ok what’s the way out? Obama used the internet and the gen-next and after that’s tools to galvanize an entire people. These guys use PDA’s and mobiles to text where to meet in the evening or fwd messages that mock Raj Thackeray. The Economic Times got all these MP’s to be the guest editors for a day; see for your self what these guys think of the nation. These guys do believe in their ideas and they have their facts right….but some times getting the facts and numbers correct seems enough.

Trying the young isn’t enough….the young didn’t try enough.