Former Civil Servants Write to the PM: ‘Take Effective Action Now’ / The BJP Can Be Defeated but the RSS Project Remains

Dear Prime Minister, We, a group of former civil servants from the All India and Central Services, with a deep commitment to the Constitution of India and with no political affiliations, have written to you as well as other constitutional authorities on a number of occasions in the past, whenever we felt that executive actions violated the provisions of the Constitution.

Today, in the midst of the Covid pandemic and the suffering that has engulfed the people of our country, we write to you in anguish as well as in anger. We are aware that this pandemic threatens the entire world and is not going to leave the citizens of India untouched. And yet, what numbs our senses daily is not just the cries of the citizenry for medical assistance and the death toll in its thousands but the manifestly casual attitude of your government to the magnitude of the crisis and its implications for the mental and physical health of the community of Indians.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF INDIA by 106 senior retired government officers: INDIA DOES NOT NEED THE CAA-NPR-NRIC

The steady erosion of the Cabinet system of governance, the worsening of federal relationships with the states, especially those governed by parties opposed to the party ruling at the centre, the lack of informed consultation with experts and Parliamentary committees, the failure to take the timely advice of expert committees and the absence of effective coordination with state governments have had disastrous consequences for the poor and disadvantaged and now for the better off sections of society as well.

Despite warnings from the international community and our own scientists, the breathing space between the first and the second waves was not used to augment critical resources such as medical staff, hospital beds, oxygen supplies, ventilators and drugs and other medical supplies. Even more inexcusably, no advance planning was done to secure adequate stocks of vaccines, despite India being one of the major vaccine suppliers to the world…

https://www.thecitizen.in//index.php/en/newsdetail/index/15/20375/take-effective-action-now—former-civil-servants-write-to-the-pm-

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The BJP Can Be Defeated but the RSS Project Remains

“When an opponent declares ‘I will not come over to your side’, I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already…. What are you, you will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community”: Speech by Adolf Hitler, November 6, 1933

Earlier this month, Mamata Banerjee and her party, the Trinamool Congress, defeated the BJP so comprehensively and decisively that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, who were otherwise vicariously eloquent about her for over a month, seem completely at a loss for words now. Certainly, the worsening COVID-19 situation may have compelled them to remember their constitutional duties but that did not prevent the prime minister from speaking to the governor of Bengal nor did it stop the home minister from deputing party president J.P. Nadda to enquire on the cause of post-poll violence in parts of Bengal that broke out even before the swearing-in of Banerjee for her third term in office.

Winning only 77 seats against an avowed claim of 200 seats must have hurt Shah deeply and that his hopeful calculations were shattered by Prashant Kishor would be even worse a humiliation within his own party, let alone the Bengal unit which is reportedly seething with anger. However, while assessing the electoral defeat of BJP it is essential that we not miss the fine print. The BJP is a small, but essential part of a larger picture that is being drawn on the social and political canvass of West Bengal. For this purpose, the fact that it has won 77 seats in the assembly, compared to its earlier tally of three seats in 2016, is a huge leap in strength.

But there is a larger change, a tectonic shift in the socio-cultural life of Bengal, which is being engineered by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sagh (RSS) since the early 1990s. It knows that capturing the hearts and minds of the young is a generational task and the RSS is ready to wait for another two elections for the BJP to capture the state in Bengal. It believes that by then, the TMC will also dissipate and disappear, as the Left and the Congress have done in this election, being reduced to zero seats in the assembly….

https://thewire.in/politics/bengal-bjp-rss-tmc-mamata-banerjee-minority-appeasement

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