Can we have our Obama, please?

As a direct consequence of the absence of real leadership we have watched secessionists and jihadis turn India into their personal playground. On the streets of Srinagar they wave Pakistani flags and shout slogans that should be considered treasonous but because there is no real leader of India they know they can get away with it. In the past four years we have seen terrorist attacks in cities across India and so little has been done to assert the will of the Indian state that the jihadis now taunt us with e-mail messages that warn us of their evil intentions.

Jihad-friendly organisations like SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) have manifestos that state in the clearest terms that they want India to become a Dar-ul-Islam (Islamic land) but our political leaders smile and say we must not take these things too seriously. The Samajwadi Party, the new best friend of the Sonia-Manmohan government, openly objects to action being taken against SIMI even though action can be taken on the basis of its manifesto alone. How dare any organisation, Hindu or Muslim, attempt to turn India into a religious state? Is this not an assault on everything India stands for? Across India these days I meet Indians who believe that national security is at risk because the government is incapable of fulfilling its primary duty.

There are other duties of government. Obama in his acceptance speech defined these. He said it (government) should “protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new roads and new science and technology”. The Sonia-Manmohan government has failed on all these counts. If we could see a glimmer of leadership in the party that believes it will head the next government then we might sleep easier at night but if you look at the Bharatiya Janata Party, you see an even more disheartening absence of real leaders. The man at the top, Shri Lal Krishna Advani, is so focussed on becoming our next prime minister that his own colleagues sneer behind his back about how he thinks of nothing else.

If he focussed for a moment on other things he might notice that there is almost nobody in his inner circle who can win a single Lok Sabha seat, leave alone a state. If he focussed on other things he may notice that what ordinary voters are looking for are alternative policies and alternative ideas on governance. What is the BJP’s policy on jihadi terrorism? What ideas does it have to drastically improve infrastructure? What will it do about improving the abysmal state of primary healthcare and education? What will it do to improve public services in rural India? What ideas does the BJP have to improve the state of our cities? Neither when it was in government nor in the past four years have we heard one new idea from the BJP. Is it any wonder then that Sonia Gandhi is India’s tallest leader? I cried through Obama’s speech not just because it was moving but because he reminded me of how very, very badly we need our own Barack Obama.