It’s been 3 years since I sat down to write a blog. I could not pen down anything, not in the literal sense, of course, but in the digital sense of the term but today I was forced to rekindle my love for writing due to the times we are living in.

Everyone has been writing about the fateful year of 2020, depressing images and stories of loss of livelihood & food and forced marathons by migrant workers as well as about good Samaritans. Some are sanguine enough to be hoping for the world to change dramatically as it has got a lot of time in hand suddenly to rethink about ‘LIFE’ whereas others are learning new skills for a dream job which they could not do earlier due to paucity of time. The world seems to be slapped with one great problem after another at a random pace. There is so much noise that it is difficult to focus on one point in a coherent manner and collect one’s thoughts without dipping into others. 

I would try to write on the hopes of people for the world to change for the better without getting digressed by other pressing issues. As Franklin D. Roosevelt quoted,

“We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.”

If I read this quote with respect to the kind of change we are hoping to see in the world, there are different kinds of expectations attached here. I would like to make a list of those expectations which are coming to my mind right now.

1. More flexibility to work from home
2. The changing International relations between the powers and Global Organisations
3. Adaptation to Minimalism and less extravagant lifestyle,
4. Respecting the labor of our staff/helps
5. Lesser Materialism

In this article, I would focus on the social aspects of the expected changes(Point no 3,4,5) . With the help of narrowing Digital Divide and growth of social media and smartphones, one no longer is dependent on the newspapers or publishing houses to be heard of. This led to various opinions getting circulated from different social classes on what this lock-down has meant for them.

When people, including I, had to do the household chores, we were faced with the pains of managing a house. This helped them(and me) realize how much of an effort, time, labor, care, vigilance goes into being a Housewife, a term replaced recently by “Homemaker” ( to make it sound niche, a topic I would delve into in another article some day soon) and still not receiving an ounce of respect or dignity by most people. This lock-down led to people opening up about how they realized how much hard work a maid does in their homes, whose labor goes unrecognized in terms of respect, if not monetarily. I, personally,  have always had some issue with physical labor not being monetarily rewarded even close enough to the mental or intellectual labor. Well, one change people expect here is that they would now respect their maids and staff members more but I feel this is not going to last in the long term. Although I want this to last forever yet the realist in me feels that it won’t. My reasons are confined to the human nature and the kind of world we have constructed for ourselves. Once this lock-down and corona is over, we would be back to our usual lives at least after 2-3 years if not soon enough. We would not have so much time in our hands and once that will happen,  we would rely on our maids and staff again and would expect a perfect job done. The feeling of respect will dissipate when we would be busy meeting our deadlines. We would be ‘ourselves’ again.

Once economic and health  setbacks would have been dealt with, most of us would forget Minimalism and the talk about less extravagant lifestyle and lesser materialism.  Everything will be once again about showing off. We would turn our back on these philosophies and would be back to our usual lives. The reason here, again is about human nature and our necessities. Today we are vouching for these concepts because we have been stripped off our luxury of going to malls or being a jetsetter.  Humans want attention and the easiest way to grab eyeballs is by succumbing to the already built system around us. A system, which is our society in this case, one which dwells on Classism. A society that respects the one with a Mercedes over WagonR. A society which respects a woman with a Gucci bag over a woman bargaining over vegetables. A society which automatically accumulates respect for a government official over the one who is his/her driver. A society which gives value to a leather bag over a jute one. A society which considers English speaking ones to be qualified to be respected while others speaking indigenous languages as illiterate or backward. This is proof enough that as a collective, society would not change to adapt to either Minimalism or a less extravagant lifestyle. Corona will be unable to change this society and hence no adaptation to the philosophies of Minimalism and Lesser Materialism would take place as expected and opinionated by some.

I would still hope that a few of these positive lifestyle changes are adopted by individuals for a better world beyond Corona and it would be appreciated if these individuals set an example for others to follow.

The Ramjas fiasco has once again stirred the debate on nationalism, Freedom of Speech and Expression, Right to peaceful protest as a fundamental right being infringed upon and what accounts as a national or an anti national but one point that I find the most important here is about the “Student Politics”. I think what happened in Ramjas is deplorable and unfortunate. Students aligned to opposing student organizations hurling shoes, abuses and what not on each other. I don’t even know which party did what because in such situations, categorically marking students as per their ideologies is a very difficult process as some hooligans, not aligned to any ideology in particular take advantage of the situation to further the damage and nuisance. Through this article, I am not declaring anybody neither the culprit nor the victim. What I am trying to convey through this article is the misuse of rights given to Students or individuals in general, as power derived. Formation of Student Organizations like any other organisation must promote the interests of the group they are representing. The youth is the future of every nation. It is only right that they in their capacity learn to work towards the progress of the nation. Since the era of the Congress Party domination, the students’ unions in India have developed a complex tradition of student politics. Most of these unions are affiliated to a political parties and actively participate in any current crisis, especially those related to students. But lately, we have witnessed student organisations turning to violent attacks and radical ideology of not allowing opposing views to be given an audience. There are numerous cases where such Student Organisations have not allowed an opposing point of view to be heard. I respect the feeling of Nationalism and at the same time also am aware of the atrocities people in some parts of our country have to go through and the problems they deal with but I find it absolutely unwise to raise slogans against one’s own country. I also feel that there are many ways and means to stop somebody from doing that. Turning to violence, creating a fracas and fear among students, leading to police being called in a campus for such reasons and converting a place of study into a ground for politics and waging war is something that I do not stand by. I do not want to sound too idealist here but I do believe that as students, as youth, as future of the country we should not only be tolerant of the antagonistic opinions but must also not succumb to violence and abrupt belligerent behavior. As a student of DU, I believe that University should be more a place of conflicting beliefs and arguments rather than National level politics being myopically reflected by students and that the sacredness of this place must be maintained in its absolute sense.

Today I am compelled to pen down a turbulent wave of thoughts that’s been disturbing me for quiet some time now. Today, when I was watching news in the morning and simultaneously scrolling down my Facebook timeline I realized that it is the time to speak up now, it is the time to let my thoughts be known to all, it is the time when a student should let her opinion be told!!! There’s so much going on, so many opinions, so many disturbing events,Rohit Vermula’s suicide case, JNU controversy of who is a nationalist and who is not, Media’s trial,  JAAT agitation for reservation, Murthal Case, Smriti Irani’s Speech, “Aunty-National” controversy and subsequent debates on all those matters- provoke me to finally give my opinion as a student,a 19 year old, a young body trying to understand things of national importance.

Without going into the details of the matter,I just want to give my opinion on the crux of each matter. JNU controversy rose around the issue and debate on who qualifies as a nationalist and who does not. While reading news reports on the ongoing verbatim quarrel, I read several articles where the “accused” either calls them an “Internationalist” from a Marxist perspective or explains his own interpretation of being a nationalist by using confused rhetoric from scholarly works. I do not want to comment who said what and what not but as a simple citizen of my nation, phrases like ” Bharat ki Barbadi tak jung rahegi ” is purely an anti-nationalist statement and i do not need alesson of some nationalist scholar to teach me what NATIONALISM actually means. Whether JNU students shouted these slogans or some “foreign” students, I just want to say that this does not qualify as a “DISSENT” for me and whether whoever shouted these slogans, they surely belonged to the “STATE” of India. If we as Indians are going to glorify these terrorists and shout “ Har ghar se Afzal niklega” then I would re-quote Smriti Irani’s mentioned quote –

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

And that is a big concern and not a thing to pretend to be cool at- as some media houses were trying to portray it through their media trials.

Coming to the JAAT agitation.However, personally I am against reservation but still the way Jaat community has put forward its demand for reservation considering themselves as poor and backward by destroying public and private property and yet again rewarding the country with a national shame of mass molestation and rape of women behind the aegis of the so called agitation. I want to ask the so called “JAAT” community that if you are burning down the schools, colleges, hospitals, etc then for whom are you asking reservation for? Where will you study after getting reservation if you yourself are smashing, destroying and burning down the temples of education?? Why not simply give reservation(if you have to) on economic basis because there is a large so called “general” community that is still poverty ridden?Well, reservation is something that I would like to comment on in a different post.

Smriti Irani, a woman Member of Parliament, an HRD Minister has, in my opinion, given one of the greatest speeches in the parliament of our times. MPs like Mayawati tried to get down on the government by debating upon the issue of inclusion of a Dalit member in case of Rohit Vermula’s probe committee. I understand her sentiments as a Dalit leader but I am amazed to know that a non-dalit member cannot provide justice to a dalit victim and the only one who can do that would be a Dalit!!!! If that is a case on which Mayawati tried to debate upon in the government then I believe a separate Court should also be instituted for the Dalit community in the country.

And then a newspaper’s headline comes as “AUNTY-NATIONAL” and I see some websites publishing articles in favor of the newspaper and I see very little uproar by the feminists of the nation who try to create a scene out of almost every little issue but a lady MP is being mocked at by a leading newspaper but to my amazement I see very less people coming and standing up for Mrs. Irani. Chetan Bhagat tweeted-” When a man makes a passionate speech,he becomes a hero.A woman does it,she gets sexist headlines.” and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the tweet.

I am really glad to see the comments of the general public on the posts by several websites, trying to create a public opinion in favor or against the government instead of just putting the facts. It is the time that we become more rationale, more logical and more mature, if not for anything else in life but at least for the issues of National Importance.