Patriotism, an unalloyed virtue of love for one’s country and nationalism, driven by the ideology of a sense of belonging to one’s country seems to be witnessing suffocation in the current dispensation of providing good governance to 135-plus crore people across the nation, identifying themselves with diverse badges of their multitude of lingo, faiths, ethnicity, economic status, affiliation to different loud-mouthed vote-seekers as their followers and what have you. The division of the land’s population has further got deepened, given its classification for purposes of privileges, particularly the all-too-familiar quota system, leaving the rest red-faced. The issue of liveability of the country, debated in formal circles and talked about informally by lay people, particularly the urban literati, influenced by pride on one side and prejudice on the other, has tended to assume the proverbial Gordian Knot proportions, requiring extraordinary powers of articulation to sustain the march of the nation towards economic prosperity not excluding the country’s last citizen.
The imperative of avoiding emotions in the matter of introducing measures that result in ease of living for everyone cannot be over-exaggerated. While law and order is getting out of hands for the administration, the gap between need and accessibility to safe water, pure air, decent shelter and health has tended to be yawning to unmanageable levels, even as the wily vote-seekers are having a field-day.
