In the recent years the world political stage has witnessed changes of historical nature. Politics as defined by politicians have proven to be disconnected with the people it is supposed to cater for. And this is why the electorate has decided to take it finally on themselves – telling the seasoned politicians out loud and clear what they want and how they want it. A lot of blogs / stories / articles are being written these days on why that is bad, on why the decisions that are being taken are wrong. I also belonged to one of these groups. However I decided to take a different look at the whole situation through my blog. May be it is the acceptance of the inevitable and therefore trying to find some sense in this surrender. For me this story really starts from India back in 2013. Narendra Modi – the current Prime minister of the country, came from no big political family or background. He was the chief minister of a state in the country doing his job well for the last 12 years or so. Although what he did very effectively was connect to the Indian public really well – the connection the other seasoned politicians had missed out and the dynastic political offshoots took for granted. The public decided to take it on themselves when they were given the promise of – “minimum government, maximum governance”. The promise was of giving control back to the people from the high walls of the offices our politicians carried out work from or our parliament where legislation after legislation would be formed without really benefiting anybody’s life. It was this promise that stuck home with a lot of people. They did not care about anything else. They were told that you have given an opportunity to those high walls to dictate the terms of your lives for 60 or more years, give me just 5 years where I can prove that YOU will rebuild this nation. This sense of overwhelming nationalism made immediate connection with the country’s vast youth population. Today’s youth are not imbecile – they want to control the action. They want to contribute in ways that can help build their dear nation. Today’s youth have a heightened sense of nationalism & anybody who can connect to them as somebody who genuinely cares for things to change, they are willing to give them a chance. I can see a lot of articles calling this fascism. I disagree – if wanting to take back control on how your country should operate is fascist, then what is nationalist? There is a lot of focus on creating the right image for the world outside, and very little focus on wanting to understand what people want inside. The governance of social appeasement for the poor with last minute benefit packages before elections to win their votes are not going to fool the voters anymore. They realise that such measures do not have long term effects. More radical steps are needed to provide the country the stability and growth it needs. People embraced mild radicalism. Years and years of socialism made them do it. Every thing I wrote above can be copied pasted in the context of why BREXIT happened. People were promised that such a vote would actually give them back control of their country. They were promised that the reasons for the problems of their country’s current problems would go away with BREXIT. Their radicalist mindset which was subdued for generations due to their socialist upbringing was titillated enough to decide on BREXIT. However shocking it was for all of Britain, it was also clear that somewhere deep down it was an unexpressed desire for a long time. Now copy paste all the above for why TRUMP got elected as the US president. The promise of giving back power to the people of the country from the politicians in the white house. His inaugural speech is dipped with raising nationalist feelings. We may not agree with his strategies, but that’s not the point. The point is of giving him a chance – the point is about taking the risk with the hope that it might actually all work out well for our dear country. Only time is going to tell if the above decisions by the electorate taken in the true spirit of nationalism turn out to be fruitful for our countries. However given public memory is short lived, even if they don’t and in a few years time we have another set of decision making to do, anybody trying to titillate our nationalist feelings will always be given a chance.
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