Politics of Performance

India has been continuously marching ahead in various spheres of public life. This has been possibly due to the immense faith of the people in the Indian democratic set up. The Indian democratic system has stood the test of time. Every challenging situation in India has produced a national leader who enabled the nation to emerge victorious. These leaders have emerged from across the parties and belonged to the diverse political spectrum and left their mark on the national psyche. The first Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru had inherited the nation that was partitioned though he had the experience of running the government but had to negotiate a gigantic challenge of refugee crisis after the holocaust due to the partition and the creation of Pakistan.Not only that he had to generate resources and establish industries that could withstand the nation. Due to his emotional attachment with Jammu and Kashmir, he wanted to deal with the accession with a soft touch. His ancestors belonged to Kashmir. His statesmanship was exploited and Pakistan invaded the erstwhile princely state that later ended in the ceasefire but a part of the state was illegally occupied by Pakistan that is now being termed as Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir(POJK). What happened after that is in the public domain. His contribution to make India a modern republic cannot be whitewashed. He also trusted China and walked an extra mile but he was given wrong counsel by Krishna Menon and the diplomats of his ilk, ending in the debacle in 1962 war with China. After his death that nation could not reconcile for quite some time but India had produced leaders in crisis. Lal Bahadur Shastri took the reins of power and led the nation with best of his abilities .He was diminutive in his physical stature but proved to be a man of unmatched strength and stood like Himalaya to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the India nation. He is remembered for cutting Pakistan to its size and replying the adversary in its own language and crossing the international borders to teach the belligerent neighbour hard lessons in the battle field.It gave a sense of pride, confidence and conviction of the Indian Defence Forces as their morale had went low due to the 1962 debacle. Shastri proved that resolute leadership at the political level is the need of the times. He identified the rallying point to consolidate the nation. And he did this by coining the very apt slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kissan.” He made it clear that soldiers and the farmers are the sentinels of the nation and the national strength cannot be measured without their contribution.With the passing of Shastri again a political vacuum was created this was filled was Indira Gandhi who proved to be the Iron Lady.Though she has been criticised for imposing the emergency.There can be different opinions on that.As those times were eclipsed by the Cold War.But it cannot be ignored that she was the only man in Indian politics who knew how to take decisive decisions in the national intrest. And this can be gauged from her response in a swift and clinical manner to the severe Bangladesh crisis,where the genocide inflicted by the military junta of Pakistan had devastated the Bengalis. Now the situation is different: the strategic and political gains achieved in 1971 by India by carving out Bangladesh on the Eastern front have been squandered. Not only that Indira Gandhi took the Khalistani secessionism head on to impose law and order in Punjab.She paid a price for this as she was killed by her own body guards as they had allegiance with the terror outfits working for the vivisection of the nation in Punjab.The list of the leaders is long. But in 1990’s India went through an unprecedented economic crisis when the nation was on the verge of being bankrupt.And terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir was at its peak.Again destiny produced a tall leader to sail India through.P.V.Narasimha Rao took the reins of the nation and managed to save the nation from the economic depression and emerged as the architect of the economically stable India by opening the markets and liberalising the economy.He sowed the seeds today’s resurgent India.Not only that asserted in unequivocal terms that the POJK areas under the legal occupation of Pakistan are India areas and India is committed take them back and got a unanimous resolution passed in the Parliament and that has become the cardinal principle of India’s policy on Jammu and Kashmir to deflate the Pakistani subversion to balkanise India.And now when India was witnessing a policy paralysis in 2013,the destiny gave India another leader,Narendra Modi who is leading India towards new horizons.he has corrected the decisions that had kept India hostage to various vices.He has emerged as the man of the moment.He has established that what matters in the national life is not the policy paralysis but the politics of performance. In this era of Modi 3.0 India is witnessing the global march of the nation towards resurgence meant to situate India as the leader of progressive India.Modern India is the evolution that has the imprint leadership in continuity and Narendra Modi is the trend setter who is committed to lead the nation towards a position of world leadership. Narendra Modi has created the Indian moment and Indian phenomenon.