Tyranny requires constant effort.
It breaks.
It leaks.
Authority is Brittle.

~ Karis Nemik’s Manifesto; Star Wars: Andor

In case you didn’t notice, the air in the Capital has changed.

Discourse around politics now has a different, angrier and more forceful texture. As you walk around crowded public places, you don’t see the same zombies going about their lives or listlessly staring into their phones anymore. Their eyes used to be dead, going about their business having been told that they are on their own — that nobody is coming to save them.

They believed that the Authority has won and you can’t do anything about it except suffer at the hands of the Tyrant.

That has changed.

Look around. Every once in a while, you see light flickering in the eyes around you. It’s very noticeable because for the last decade, these eyes have been dark hollow pits of despair. Now, that despair has been replaced by something else… hope, maybe?

The Authority has noticed this too and it scares the shit out of him.

This Authority is being run by an out-and-out Tyrant. They want to maintain full control so desperately because Authority is brittle. It can shatter, it can break, it can end.

The thing is (as Nemik’s Manifesto so nicely puts it) tyranny requires constant effort.

Humans are meant to be free, they are supposed to imagine new worlds, express new ideas, have adventures, while simultaneously working together for the upliftment and betterment of each other. We are social animals who are supposed to live like a community and thrive, live a happy life and collectively enable others to do it too. When confined into a box — into a thought prison — human citizens suffocate and choke. They yearn for escape.

Keeping this thought prison intact requires constant effort on the part of the Tyrant. He needs to watch and be wary for even the slightest signs of dissent.

What if the prisoners start thinking about escaping?
What if they talk to each other and organize?
What if they revolt against us?
What if they burn this prison down?
What if I die?

So the Authority builds a surveillance system obsessively, a flying squad of terrifying goons who go around threatening citizens, prison guards in uniform who smirk when they are violent and they let them loose. The Tyrant captures every institution, every forum of debate and discussion where the people can engage with alternate ideas, and thoroughly kills them to overpower his Authority.

ngl that shit requires a lot of effort.
Constant, Relentless, Aggressive, Effort.

The tyrant doesn’t sleep for more than 4 hours because… he can’t sleep. It’s not a virtue, it’s an inevitability. He’s the jailor of a prison full of rowdy prisoners who want to escape his control. The moment he makes a mistake, takes a small shut eye to rest, or even looks away, that could be the moment that sparks his inevitable downfall.

Some of the prisoners were keeping a vigil, watching the tyrant from a distance. They could see his arrogance, they could feel his weakness. You see, the tyrant was getting old and his court had started to ask the inevitable question: “What if he dies? What comes after that? Who comes after that? Is this the end?”

The Tyrant heard those whispers and looked at his court. There was a theft in his temple, in a shrine that was built in his name. His supporters were making noises and whispering “what the hell is going on?” The squabbling courtiers had started a rumor about how weak the Authority is in reality, how the Tyrant was losing control, and that the succession needs to be discussed.

The prisoners saw that, quickly organized and passionately started scaling the walls of this thought prison. The Tyrant panicked. Badly. He used his Authority with an iron fist and ordered his guards to beat the shit out of the prisoners, to use pellet guns, tear gas them, break their heads with nails on their batons, shock them to death. He released his orange goons on the street to quell the rebellion.

But that only angered the prisoners more as they saw the first line of young energetic hopeful escapees getting beaten and bloodied. It sent a shockwave through the prison, even the ones who were not joining the rebellion felt compelled to do so. They ran towards the walls, in a frenzy, with passion, wanting to scale them as quickly as possible. The Tyrant could see that if the prisoners escape, they will come for him. They will come as a horde with fire in their eyes, totally intent on breaking down the castle walls and reclaim the kingdom for themselves.

The Authority was in a panic situation. The house of cards was wobbling and they needed to steady it. Somehow. The Tyrant checked the deck of cards next to him and realized quickly that the cards were rotten — the entire deck is rotten to the core — because the system that makes these cards was rotten too.

What’s worse, after getting beaten, teargassed and hurt, the prisoners just kept getting up. They would get up, look him in the eye and… laugh.

The prisoners had started pointing and laughing at the Tyrant who was shuffling a deck of rotten cards again and again, hands shaking and fumbling. The make-up on his face was thick, making him look more unnatural and inhuman. In a desperate attempt to pander, he did an address to the nation trying hard to present his side. But it was too late.

Nobody could relate to him or who he had become, so they laughed.
They mocked.
And they cursed.

The Tyrant realized that his Authority is brittle.

There were cracks spreading, rapidly. Some prisoners had already escaped, so he tried to double down on the existing ones. He is angry, he is lashing out but its too late. The citizens who escaped have now hunkered down, waiting in the shadows, the jungles, the underground bunkers. They watch with heightened senses. The beatings had woken them up, sharpened their instincts and they had tasted blood. Quite literally.

Because the Citizens know, when the Tyrant blinks again, the next time he looks away, that would be the day of the greatest prison-break in the history of this amazeballs nation.

A citizen must be Wise.

The other day I was talking to a friend and they were lamenting about how their phone usage exceeds more than 6 hours a day. Sometimes it goes to 9 hours. I asked, “But what is it that you do on the phone?”

My friend looked at me blankly and said, “Reels”. Then he paused for a bit, looked a bit guilty. “I can’t stop you see. Once I start, I lose track of time and I can’t stop.” There was a tinge of desperation in his voice.

I imagined my friend lying in bed at 2 am, in the dark, with the phone screen illuminating his face, eyes wide and consuming absolute garbage brainrot content. Consistently getting those 30 second dopamine hits and pushing away the need to sleep.

Absolutely fucking hypnotized.

India in 2026 has been hypnotized by an algorithm that feeds you nonsense and gives you short dopamine hits. It’s happening across classes, age groups, genders: everyone is walking around hypnotized.

One must ask, what happens when you get a constant barrage of raw unprocessed information in real-time, and you have to act on it? The answer is simple: You feel paralyzed.

In this situation, is it even possible to be wise? Can one aim to be wise or acquire wisdom? I believe we must try to find that answer. But first, what is wisdom to begin with?

Boiled down, the best way to describe wisdom is the ability to make better decisions.

Your brain is constantly consuming information, consciously and unconsciously. The Brain is processing that information to the best of its ability, and using it to make decisions. But that process of processing is currently paralyzed by brainrot.

Why? Because the whole point of processing the information is to sift through garbage & find out what is useful and what isn’t for you, your community, your family, your environment and your society.

When you do a task — if you are a thinking person — you will be able to figure out the “what do I do with this” and “how do I do it”. But it hasn’t taught you to ask one vital question: “why am I doing this?”

You see, our education system has trained us to do a few very basic things:

1. Hoover up information, rote learn it, store it in your brain.

2. Ask: what am I doing?

3. Then ask: how am I going to do it?

4. Do a task in the most efficient way possible — even if it means taking shortcuts, cutting corners and doing jugaad.

5. Get rewarded for a job well done.

That’s when you are being smart. We’ve all been taught to do this, because the current system views every person as “human resource”. We are all resources that are to be extracted for profits — gathering wealth, fame and power. But there is an essential step which we are never encouraged to do. It comes in the middle of this cycle.

Step 3.5 is Why am I doing this?

I believe when you ask WHY, that is when you go from being just smart, to becoming wise. Wisdom is when you have that additional filter in your head where you are constantly questioning the process of processing itself.

Wisdom requires you to take a pause from time to time and ask, “So, is there any real point to all this information I am consuming? Why am I doing this? Should I do this? Or should I do something better?”

Take the News for example.

As I write this, a few things are happening in the news:

• America has attacked Iran a while ago causing massive supply chain disruptions.

• Prime Influencer of India has ordered everyone to buy less gold, travel less, save as if we are at war and implement “COVID-like measures”.

• NEET-UGC paper leak has happened, which is now a regular occurrence at this point.

• A guy named Jitu Munda in Odisha’s Keonjhar district carried his sister Kalara’s skeleton to the local bank everyday just to prove that she is dead, and to allow him to withdraw Rs. 19,300 from her bank account.

I consumed all this information in literally 10 minutes. As a content creator, I have to pick which one to amplify, do videos on or just post about so that my audience knows what is happening. As a smart person, I already know the what here. The information is there. I need to figure out how to present it: youtube video, substack post, rage-tweet, insta story etc.

But if I pause for a second, and do step 3.5. If I look at all this and ask: Why am I doing this? Why is this thing happening? Why do I have this random burst of information in the first place?

Now… we are really thinking, aren’t we?

Because now I am wondering:

1. America Attacks Iran: OK so prices are going to go up and everything is expensive now. My savings are going to take a hit. I need to be careful about eating out, and buying shit. Will I be able to sustain myself in this situation? Especially when my youtube analytics are telling me constantly that I’m firmly in the you-have-shitty-view-count-zone now?

2. NEET paper leak: I’m not a NEET student, but do I know any students who are affected by this? Should I make a video and curse the government for not caring about the careers of 2.3 lakh students? What happened to the 2024 NEET paper leak case? Will it make any difference if talk about that? Or should I try to contact a few NEET students and talk to them instead, provide a shoulder to cry on, an ear that listens? Why should this be a performative act to create content out of?

3. Jitu Munda of Odisha is grabbing headlines (a.k.a. going viral *ugh*) because it’s an unusually desperate step to dig up your sister’s grave and carry a skeleton to a bank. Why did this situation happen in the first place? Why are bank officials so heartless and couldn’t see the pain he was going through this January? Why did it come to a point where Jitu had to do this? What systemic failure lead to this? Does caste & class have something to do with it? Is it happening in more places?

The scope of every news item I consume becomes larger and larger the more why questions I ask.

Earlier, when I didn’t ask the “why” questions, I was just thinking about what the information is and how I can use it to make videos (which is one of my many jobs). But when I asked why, shit got real. Deeper issues started revealing themselves. I started thinking about these things and, hopefully, started making better — wiser — decisions on all fronts.

But the larger meta question also lingers: Do I need to know all of this? Why am I even seeking this information out? That’s where the existential crisis lives… We’ll visit that bit of our wisdom-land later in this post.

Please understand this for now: News, in 2026 India, is a bullshit factory most of the time. So is social media. It feeds you information because society has collectively decided that having more information is a good thing. I have to humbly disagree. The truth is, all information is not useful. Most information is brainrot inducing garbage that goes inside your head and paralyzes you.

In fact, most of it has been designed to trigger you emotionally into thinking that it is useful, but it isn’t. Information in the form of content is engineered to make you angry, rage, get dopamine hits, react senselessly, or feel absolutely shitty about yourself so that you end up buying more products to fill the void within.

How does one escape this shit pit? How do we break the hypnotic paralyzed state we are in? Is it even possible to become wise?

Simple answer: I think it is possible. And honestly, it’s not that hard. But it also needs to become a practice which will involve some painful moments of self-realization, guilt, moral dilemmas, ethical questions and, ultimately, mental breakdowns. It would also require the citizen to accept that they can change, as people. That they can shed their old skins and let the new one grow out. Until it’s time to shed that too.

I’m going to be a little prescriptive here, but bear with me. It will all make sense in the end and make you… wiser? Such is my hope.

How does one get wisdom?

By doing the following:

1. Think, but critically

2. Gain the right kind of Knowledge, sift through it

3. Gain the vocabulary to articulate your thoughts

4. Learn the skills required to act on those thoughts

5. Be present, be hyper-aware of where you are, and your environment

6. Get creative, think abstract — let your inner child wonder & wander

7. Admit mistakes when you make them, try to correct it and move on

Basically, allow this to happen.

In fact, you should induce it deliberately.

(SIDENOTE: Dear reader, I know I sound like a motivational guru now. I’m aware. But this is being written for a larger purpose I have in mind. Trust me. You’ll get why I’m doing this very very soon.)

OK, so let me walk you through these steps towards WISDOM:

First, a citizen must think critically. This is the deliberate act of breaking down complex information, evaluating it according to the situation at hand and then drawing fair conclusions. I use the word fair because I don’t think being ‘unbiased’ is possible. Being fair with yourself, your own thoughts and conclusions, is actually possible and achievable.

Second, a citizen must constantly endeavor to acquire the right kind of knowledge and set up filters to sift out the garbage that we consume on a daily basis. Maybe even learn to not consume garbage in the first place. I think it has become imperative for each one of us to question what we are watching, listening to and hearing on a daily basis. Every act of information consumption has to be deliberate, not unconscious.

Third, a citizen must attempt to gain vocabulary to understand, express and articulate complex information. Sharing is caring, in this case it is vital that each citizen does it actively. But rather than unconsciously sharing something that gives you an emotional rush, the act of sharing must be deliberate too.

Fourth, one must constantly try to acquire skills that would help turn thoughts into action. It’s impossible to acquire all the skills, obviously. But it is possible to find people with the required skills in order to execute a particular action. It is possible to organize and be wiser… together.

Fifth, a citizen must be hyper-aware about their environment, their place in the social hierarchy, where they are in the power structure of society, how privileged they are in terms of caste/class/gender/race/region, how they can navigate through this environment and use their skills to be as effective as possible.

Sixth, a citizen must let themselves be creative. Become a child sometimes, let your mind wander about and explore strange universes, thought-scapes and bizarre environments. Use your imagination and get lost in worlds that you create for yourself. It would become a pleasant escape from our current brainrot inducing reality. Don’t get lost in it forever, obviously, but just keep it around in case you need a breather.

Seventh, and this is the most important step. One must admit mistakes, and take responsibility for them. It is inevitable that in this quest to become wise, you will go down many wrong paths, many mistakes will be made. But don’t beat yourself too much about it, let it happen. Forgive yourself because you were trying out something new & unfamiliar. What is important is if you make mistakes, then you must have the courage and wisdom to admit it. Then you can work towards correcting it, and moving on. Shed that old skin, because you have a new one.

Congratulations! Wisdom has been unlocked!

As far as I understand, this can become a path to wisdom. And a citizen must be wise.

How Aware should a Citizen be?

As the saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss”.

Maybe this needs to be modified a little bit to fit the world we live in now.

I say…

Not gonna lie, becoming wise does involve consuming and processing a lot of information, then reflecting on it. As I pointed out in the beginning, in 2026 India everyone is being battered with information and made “aware” of the dumpsterfire we are all living in. So it has become vital for each citizen to first think about what information is coming towards them, and selectively ignore stuff which paralyses their brain and infects it with brainrot.

It has become vital for everyone to have a mini existential crisis from time to time, so that this behavior is built within them by default.

I’m working towards figuring this one out myself. So far, I have made some progress which I will share with you:

• I have largely stopped consuming the news, and become really mindful about it. I read/watch news only if a trusted friend or source sends it to me.

• I have started reading the newspaper again. It’s delayed news, but better in a lot of ways. Real time news is just not required. I don’t watch TV news or broadcast at all.

• I avoid watching short form content as much as I can. I watch short videos only if someone I care about sends them to me, and I actively stop myself from doomscrolling to the next one.

• I am trying to read more books. There was a time when I used to read 7 books at a time, simultaneously, across genres. I’m trying to do that again (and sucking at it but hey I’ll get there again soon).

• I don’t binge shows on OTT anymore, I watch things one episode a time and stop. I give myself a maximum of 1 hour of TV time a day.

• On youtube, I go to specific channels that I like to see if they posted anything interesting — instead of relying on the homepage algorithm.

• I try to spend 30 minutes every morning, writing down my thoughts. Just a flow of consciousness purposeless style of writing. A lot of thoughts start taking shape automatically when I do that. Or I use my whiteboard to scribble things down and just think things through.

These are things I have been doing for the past two months, slowly and deliberately. Sometimes I slip up and start doomscrolling, or get lost in Youtube darkness, but I try not to be too hard on myself either. I remind myself that these apps and websites are designed to hack my brain, and it’s ok if sometimes they succeed. I just need to notice it more and stop it before it gets bad. I’m definitely getting better at it.

At this moment, I’m able to (thankfully) embrace selective ignorance and I realized that this really helped in the past week when I went viral online & was getting severely trolled.

Context:

Despite this madness, I was still able to function, do my work and continue doing multiple things like an energizer bunny on crack. Happy to announce, I am not paralyzed anymore.

In conclusion: A citizen must be wise. And I hope to get wiser everyday.

I hope you do too.

A citizen must be kind.

Kindness cannot be taught, but people can be influenced to be unkind to each other. That’s what our current political system does. It rakes up issues of identity, caste, language, region, culture, religion, gender and more, just so that people divide themselves into different groups & teams. Then they pit one team against the other, just so they can gain votes as a block.

Citizens have been stripped of their humanity reduced down to statistics & voter blocks, which in itself is an unkind act enabled by political parties whose singular goal is to win elections. In this process, the main ingredient used by political parties is HATE.

And hate is another word for: “Be unkind to the people who are not like you”.

In the political system of India, kindness is mostly absent. All the people who would describe themselves as “kind” have been systematically kept away from this toxic whirlpool of hate. They are the pariahs of politics in 2026. Being “kind” is considered a weakness in an arena where you are taught to be ruthless, hateful, abrasive and unkind.

Is it a weakness? Or are there certain advantages to being a generally kind citizen?

SIDENOTE: The moment I ask the question “what are the advantages of being kind?”, I am fully aware that the act of kindness can morph into selfishness… but we’ll come to that later.

So, what is Kindness?

When a citizen does acts that are:

1. Selfless

2. Generous

3. Friendly

4. Without expecting anything in return

That’s kindness.

First, a selfless act would entail totally ignoring your ‘self’ (your ego) before doing the said act. A citizen who is hyper-focused and locked in to the needs of others around them, and do acts which improve the well being of such people, would be doing a selfless act. Selflessness comes instinctively, it might not be a conscious choice. I would argue it should not be a choice at all, it should be a default setting.

Second, a generous act would entail giving up a part of your own comfort to benefit others. The human endeavor in 2026 is to improve, increase and even maximize personal comfort. That can be done through gathering wealth, fame and power. But a generous act would entail giving up either of those to someone else who needs it more. It can be charity, platforming worthy people or transferring power to those below you on the socio-economic ladder.

Third, a friendly act would entail everyday meaningful interactions with fellow citizens. A simple act of smiling meaningfully, engaging in banter, joking about, or offering a shoulder to cry on, can go a long way towards being a kind citizen. Here, the act of LISTENING is an important trait that needs to be honed within a citizen so that these acts of friendliness just happen unconsciously.

Fourth, most important, one must do all these acts without expecting anything in return. In 2026, you see that every act done around you is with the intention of getting something in return for yourself. This ties in to the earlier point about pro-maxxing personal comfort. There needs to be an awareness in every citizen that wealth, fame and power are limited in quantity. When you gather either of those, there is someone else who is losing out.

Selflessness is about gaining awareness about this simple fact and doing acts to rectify it. But these acts should be done unconsciously, that is the only way one can do it without expecting anything in return. The moment you think about the ‘selfless act’ you are engaging in, you start to see advantages and disadvantages of doing so. That is when you start weighing how it benefits or disadvantages you.

Having said that, it is worth noting that acts of kindness do have some advantages in the larger socio-political project called India.

These are the few I have identified (for now):

1. Breaking Barriers: Kindness allows a citizen to expand their horizons by interacting with and forming connections with other citizens who are NOT like them. It helps them touch grass.

2. Enable Conversations: Kindness enables communication and exchange of ideas. Once barriers are broken, conversations begin and citizens start learning from each others experiences. Collectively, we become stronger and more resilient.

3. Build Trust: In a low trust society like India in 2026, Kindness can be the antidote to building it up again.

4. Reduce Stress: At a personal level, kindness enables citizens to find community and get rid of their isolation. It reduces stress and provides a feeling of safety + security since they are actively removing their personal fears about other people by putting themselves out there.

Kindness can be a tricky virtue to execute in the real world. The best way to describe it is Crowd Surfing.

When a rockstar performing on a stage jumps into the audience, desperately hoping that the crowd will catch them and put them back on the stage, that is what kindness looks like.

The rockstar is hoping that their crowd is full of kind people who won’t let them fall down. But it’s a hope, not a guarantee. When they jump, the rockstar is not expecting the crowd to cushion their fall. They are hoping it would happen. On the part of the crowd, their act of extending the hand up to grab their favorite rockstar is almost an instinctive and protective act. It’s them being kind without even realizing what is happening. There might be an innate desire to protect the person who is jumping onto them, but it doesn’t have to be a conscious choice they make.

The crowd is being kind to the rockstar who is crowd-surfing.

How does one enable citizens to be kind? Is it even possible to inculcate kindness within people or is it a quality that you either have or just don’t.

Perhaps one way to look at this problem is to assume that all humans are kind to begin with, but it is beaten out of them as they grow up. Sometimes quite literally. But this is also a privileged notion to have. If you are born in abject poverty, in a slum and have literally nothing, when everyday existence is a struggle and you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, expecting acts of kindness from this person would be cruel.

In India, 100 crore plus people, or 60% of our population is in this situation. Desperation leads to people being unkind to each other, hunger leads to murder and violence, homelessness leads to an innate base desire to snatch shit from others. Joblessness leads to violent uprisings, young men dancing on mosques and a general disdain towards society which enabled this hopeless situation.

Is it even possible to expect kindness in such a situation? How does one build up compassion and empathy in a citizenry that is desperate, poor, angry, frustrated and numb?

It’s a question worth asking and thinking about. I don’t have the answer right now, but maybe I will one day.

Perhaps, every citizen can do acts of kindness which are in the realm of possibility first. They can start by being kind to themselves first, then move on to the rest of the world.

This is important because 2026 India forces you to be unkind to yourself as well. Every citizen is growing up in a world that is hell-bent on making them feel triggered and insecure about themselves 24x7. It forces citizens to constantly monitor their behavior, body, bank accounts, properties, relationships and their work. Citizens are required to maximize their ‘worth’ in the market. To sell themselves and their skills by hook or crook. It forces you to constantly think in terms of doing selfish acts that benefit yourself, not kind acts that benefit others. Because our current social zeitgeist has decided that kindness is for stupid people.

Unfortunately, the people who have the capacity to do kind acts are more inclined to conduct violence on the have-nots through unkind acts. This is not a blanket statement, of course. There are citizens out there who have the capacity for kindness but don’t know how. Or they are in a situation of stasis, a paralyzed state induced by those who see kindness as a weakness, as stupidity.

Maybe it’s time to find the second category of people shake them out of their stasis traps, to remind them that “hello my lovely Citizen Sane. Here’s a reminder that you are kind, you are smart, and you are important. And you are NOT fucking alone.”

A citizen can and must be kind.

Ash went inside a grocery shop and told the people in the shop, “Hello! Namaskar! I'm Ash, an independent candidate from this constituency. I'm giving a speech in five minutes an that street corner,” she pointed at the general direction.

“Please come listen to me!”

She thanked them, bowed briefly and then went to the shop next door to do the same. Again. And again. And again. For 15 minutes she was just running about gathering a crowd… for her own rally.

I just followed her around. It was hard to keep up, but I felt myself getting a little teary eyed. Because when I reached the street corner with her, ready to deliver her speech… there was nobody there.

It was a bit heartbreaking ngl.

But, Ash didn't care. She asked her cousins -- six of them who were doubling up as her cadre for the election -- to start the event. They were the opening act.

Her brother, Anish, who came off as a shy reserved person when I met him earlier (also he drove her in a little red Celerio), suddenly had a booming voice and started screaming into a microphone.

“EVERYONE! COME LISTEN TO ASH! OUR CANDIDATE! SHE IS THE HOPE OF SILIGURI, SHE IS YOUR SISTER, YOUR DAUGHTER, SHE GREW UP ON THESE STREETS! COME LISTEN TO WHAT SHE HAS TO SAY!”

And then… a glimmer of hope.

Some ladies gingerly came out of their houses, some bored men appeared out of their shops and leaned out of curiosity -- not committing fully, but clearly wondering what was happening.

Ash took the stage and started speaking.

This 37 year old school teacher/IT consultant who was an independent candidate appeared to be suddenly possessed. She transformed into a beast with a booming voice.

Literally minutes before this, she was talking to me about how Crash Landing on You is her favorite K-drama and we were giggly high-fiving over it. Now, this woman was speaking as if the ghost of some varshit warrior knight just went inside her and took over.

She spoke for 15 minutes… passionately… to an empty road. Some stragglers came, have her a bored look, and left.

I watched and wondered, why the fuck is she doing this?

Any normal person would be deeply embarassed at this situation. It's easy to come on a stage when there is already a crowd gathered for you. But doing this… what she was doing… takes titanium sized balls.

Ash had spent ₹50,000 of her own savings to put up this strange show. This was the 20th edition of her speech, she told me. And she was going to do three more runs that day. Till 10 in the night.

This is what she does. She runs around, gathers people for her own speech, gives a speech, goes to a handful of people who are gathered there, seeks blessings and moves to a new location.

Relentlessly.

“Do you think you'll win,” I asked her.

“Of course I will,” she responded vehemently. “I am confident. People on the internet say I won't even get 500 votes but in my head I think, jaa naa bey (translation: fuck off), I don't care! I'm standing up for what is right, for my state, for my soul and myself." And I will win!”

Ash is not blind though, or insane (or maybe she is a little bit but in a good way). She perfectly understands that she is participating in a broken ass theoretical electoral system we have in India. Here, political parties are the massive juggernauts sauntering through a battlefield, crushing everyone in their way. They throw money, manpower, propaganda, media, kitchen sink and hatred in every direction like a firehose.

Ash, on the other hand, is a mere fly buzzing around which can be swatted away with ease. She is facing the biggest and meanest political war machines out there -- TMC and BJP… state fascist vs national fascist.

But this fly refuses to stop buzzing. And I'm proud of her.

That, my dear readers, is what courage really looks like.

P.S. We are doing an entire video on her which will be up on my YouTube channel. For now, you can check out this audio podcast we are doing called CAR PODCAST.

It's an audio diary of our experience of finding people like Ash -- The crazies, the underdogs, the Independents.

In one line, it is this: Content Creation is an intense battle between creating stuff that you want to create, and creating stuff that the public want you to create.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my “content strategy” lately and I’ve had some important realizations which, I think, are worth sharing with whoever is reading this.

But first, a little information about what led me to this point: I make videos on youtube for a living in the politics, policy and civic education space. I’ve been doing this for the past decade, first for a news organization, now on my own youtube channel. For all these years, I told myself that I am creating videos that I want to make.

That was a lie. Maybe I started out that way, but I stopped doing it rather quickly.

For instance, the first video series I made was called Consti-tuition. That was back in 2017. It was an attempt at explaining our complicated Indian Democracy, how it works and why we should all care about it. The series was designed to be light, full of jokes and just have a friendly vibe. In the traditional “content strategy” sense, that was an objectively terrible idea. If I pitched this idea to any news channel or big youtube channel today, they would cringe.

“It wouldn’t lead to any growth,” they’d remark. “It’s not what the audience wants to see. Find something current, something that is going viral, a news event that everyone is talking about. Do explainers on that. All this civics and all won’t get you any views.”

I was lucky though. My series was hosted on Newslaundry, a subscriber-funded news platform. Their enterprise is built in a way that they don’t give a rat’s ass about traditional “content strategy wisdom” because the public funds their work. When I pitched the series to them, they jumped at it and we got to work.

So we did 10 episodes of civic education content and put it out on Youtube.

I still remember what I was thinking back then when the first videos started rolling out. I was out to prove to the world that videos like these can also go viral, that a lot of people would want to watch this. It felt like what I wanted to create was in total alignment with what the audience wanted.

It was going to be glorious!

SPOILER ALERT: Nothing went viral. The series did terribly on Youtube, numbers-wise. Reality hit me like a truck. I was wrong.

For the first time ever, I realized how misaligned I was with this amorphous beast called “the audience”. In my head, I was thinking that a lot of people would be curious (like me) about how the democratic & political system around them works. That they would jump at the opportunity to learn more and become better citizens. Also have a little fun while doing it.

Nope. That was wrong too.

Weirdly enough though, the people who did end up watching my first series of videos were, well, a niche audience. Parents reached out to me telling me that they are showing the series in classrooms of high-schools. Their kids would come home and tell them about this cool guy on youtube who teaches civics so much better than their own teacher. I had professors from public policy schools email me that they were showing my series in their classrooms as a “beginners guide to Indian Democracy”. Some even put it in the “must watch” category of their syllabus.

This should objectively make me happy, right?

To be perfectly honest, as a creator, it was a strange feeling. I was glad that the show had found an audience, but I was sad that it was not a massive audience. I was sad that the episodes weren’t going viral.

What followed after that was a long hard process of me trying to pander to a more “general” audience, as much as I could. For a decade, I tried to make videos that would get more views and go viral. That it would get millions of views, thousands of comments and it would be shared everywhere by everyone as a “must watch”.

Until a month ago.

Last month, I had a bit of a breakdown. An existential crisis was brewing in my head for a while, that just bubbled up and exploded out like a volcano full of acidic bile vomit.

You see, for the past year or so, I’ve been trying to “grow” my channel by applying different content strategies.

“Fix those thumbnails & make them more clickable,” I told myself. “Use hooks at the beginning of the videos. Increase your watch duration. Pick topics that are going viral. Do reaction videos. Make shorter videos. Pander… pander… pander HARDER. Do things that please the algorithm gods!”

Turns out, I hated doing that.

In my head I was doing what I’ve been dreaming of doing for a while: Make videos on Youtube. Create something that I want to create.

But in reality, I was striving to create stuff that the audience wanted to watch. There was a very very obvious disconnect. And I could feel it my bones, but I ignored it. Because when I create something that I want to, it’s really satisfying. I derive literal joy from it. The process of making that video is highly enjoyable, and I become an energizer bunny when doing it. I spring up from my bed at 5:30 in the morning and I cannot wait to write, shoot, edit and put out a video.

But when I make video-slop for the general public — or with the larger intent of reaching the general public — it turns into an absolute chore. I have to push myself to do the things which I’m supposed to enjoy. The whole reason why I started doing my own channel was so that it could be fulfilling for me. This is not it.

So now I’m asking myself, “why the fck do I keep giving chores to myself. Chores are boring. They don’t give me joy. This shit is making me miserable.”

It’s weird really how it took a decade for me to understand this simple fact. It took me a decade to understand what the word “Creator” actually means. At least to me.

A creator is someone who creates things that they want to create. If you do that, it will find an audience. Not just a general amorphous blob of an audience, it would be an audience that is legit tuned in. It’s an audience that cares about what you do deeply, probably even more than you realize. It would be an audience that is loyal, invested and locked in. It would be an audience that sees you as someone they trust, a friend, a decent human being and someone they relate to.

And that is worth busting your ass for.

Content Creation in 2026 is a trap. The algorithms, social media, the whole internet, is designed to enable pandering to the public. Conventional wisdom tells you to reach more and more people, to create shit that makes you more “discoverable”, to be someone who is creating content that attracts brands, ads and the amorphous always-online blob called “the audience”.

What’s worse is that 99% of all creators don’t see it as a trap. They see it as a way of life. Or maybe they are ok with it being that way and burning themselves out in the process from time to time.

I see it now, and I am trying to figure out a way to escape this trap. Let’s see if I can actually do it and continue to do what I love to do: Make Videos.

His latest is titled “Six things to learn from BJP”. You can read the whole thing but it’s unlikely you’ll want to put in the effort, so I’ll give you a TLDR of it.

BJP has been winning a bunch of elections so it is successful. The recent Gujarat win points to the fact (Himachal Pradesh loss not so much).

Everyone keeps pointing out what is wrong with the BJP but, I, Chetan Bhagat, am going to tell you what the BJP has been doing “extremely right”. And you, the reader, can learn from it.

ONE, BJP folks have true passion for winning elections and governance. Learn from them and have true passion in whatever you do.

TWO, BJP folks do hard-work 24x7. So you also do hard work and you will succeed.

THREE, BJP has amazeballs communication skills. It conveys its plans and schemes to the public in a simple and precise way, plus they are great at execution. You should also keep your goals simple and execute them well.

FOUR, BJP understands Indian psychology like no other party. It knows what Indians want (Hindu culture, restoring greatest civilization etc.) You also need to understand your audience, customers (or voters) and pander to them.

FIVE, BJP doesn’t care about the approval of “English speaking elite”. I mean sure it sometimes indulge in chest-beating when western publications say good shit about the government they run BUT they don’t give a shit about elite snobby english Indians. You also need to ignore the elite English-speaking snotty poopy Indians in order to succeed.

SIX, BJP has the vision to make India the greatest country in the known universe. You also need to have a vision, even if it is difficult to achieve.

That is why BJP is so successful and it’s time for us to also learn from the most “successful party on earth”.

Chetan Out.

(NOTE: I’m paraphrasing some stuff here and talking in first person. Please don’t hate me for indulging a bit.)

Here’s the thing, I am going to trash this opinion piece a wee bit with my own opinions. But at the end of the day, these are all opinions. His and mine. One English Speaking Elite Indian’s opinion vs another.

So take it or leave it.

Keep calling out the Party in power

See, it’s very simple.

The need to write a column like this where Bhagat had to point out, rather deliberately, what a rich political party with lots of power is doing right is… misplaced. You don’t need to do that because BJP and its supporters are doing a fabulous job of doing it themselves. The mainstream media (largely TV) is super aligned and fine-tuned to sing praises for the BJP. They are, in a lot of ways, the BJP. Ideologically, theoretically, financially, metaphysically, intrinsically and tangentially aligned to everything that the greatest politically party on the planet is doing.

Here’s a quick look at what BJP’s strategy looks like when faced with criticism (or even jokes):

ONE, they deflect each and every criticism that comes their way
TWO, they distract and start talking about non-issues
THREE, they defend whatever they do as if they are fighting a constant war against everyone that hates them.
FOUR, they assume anyone that criticizes them hates them.
FIVE, so they attack these ‘haters’, day in and day out, instead of addressing the criticism.
<rinse and repeat>

(Just take a look at any BJP spokesperson anywhere and apply these 5 rules to what they are saying, you’ll see a pattern which is very obvious.)

The BJP is quite rich, in case you didn’t notice. They spend a shit-tonne of their donation money on advertising for themselves and building up their party cadre. The public is clueless about where this money is coming from, so they don’t know which team the BJP is batting for. The party is run like a super-efficient business and the products on offer are tweaks to laws, taxpayer funded projects and other favors. You can donate to the BJP using a secret currency which can be used only by political parties, called Electoral Bonds, and then sit back, relax, while the BJP does its thing. You are now a client after-all.

In a situation like such, where those with deep pockets basically run the country, it becomes kaafi imperative for everyone to question what the fuck is going on. It is not required to spoon-feed ‘learnings’ from this self-serving all-powerful political entity to a readership base that, essentially, doesn’t have power.

And that is precisely why every point our friend Chetan makes, ends with putting individual responsibility on the reader. “Look, BJP does this. That’s why its successful. So you should do the same as an individual ok?”

For one, its ludicrous to think that an individual can match what the BJP as a whole ecosystem can do. And two, it comes off as a roundabout way to absolve BJP of the responsibility to make individual lives better. Kindly refrain from shifting the burden from an entire powerful government to a powerless individual citizen.

A passion to stay in power

Oh yes BJP has a lot of passion. And the goal here is to stay in power and keep the ‘well-oiled’ political machinery/business running.

I can have passion for literally anything, but the goal towards which that passion is being applied also matters. A serial killer can have a passion to murder people without getting caught, but the takeaway here is not to focus on the “passion” and apply it in your own life. The lesson is to say that killing other folk is wrong. Whether you do it passionately or dispassionately, it’s just wrong.

This is the basic problem with people who tend to preach ‘passion’ as a virtue. Literally everyone around me is passionate about something. I know people who are passionate about lying around on their couch on weekends just to get lost in the world of infinite interweb content. I know people who are passionate about teaching underprivileged kids. I also know people who are passionate about getting up 15 minutes before going to work, perfecting the morning getting-ready-for-work routine, just so they can sleep a little bit more. My landlord is passionate about collecting rent. I am am passionate about doing work that will allow me to earn money so that I can pay the rent. My dog is passionate about barking loudly at other dogs that are passing by, the other dogs are also passionate about barking back.

See what I mean? Everyone has passion. What you apply that passion to is what matters more.

BJP’s goal is to stay in power by hook or crook. The goal is resource control. BJP believes (like every political entity in power) that only they know how this giant human society should be run. Only they know how it can progress. And to make that happen, BJP needs to gather more power. They do all this with utmost passion for sure.

Lets not put that ‘passion’ on a pedestal please? The takeaway here is to look at the end-goal of this political juggernaut for what it is, in a cold calculated way. Then see what you get out of it by exploiting it.

Should you be passionate about gathering more power at an individual level or for your organization? Of course. Look around, that’s what ‘success’ means in the modern world. But while you do that, please try not to trample over other people and make them suffer thnx much appreciated.

Develop amazeballs Communication Skillz

This point I agree with. BJP has perfected communication down to a science. They know how to boil down a complex thought into a simple emotion filled repetitive slogan that appeals to a wide variety of people. They can mesmerize crowds with their promises, create campaigns that make individuals change their priorities in life, or even make people stand in line for days to withdraw their own hard-earned money. They can convince taxpayers to give more tax for the Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Bharat. BJP can make people bang plates enthusiastically, demolish private buildings without giving prior notice, and even defend actual rapists. The hold they have on the minds of citizens is magical.

And they are able to do that because citizens, at large, don’t really want to think critically about what their brains are being fed. No no, I’m not going to preach here and be like, “Oh our education system needs to encourage critical thinking and all”. That’s already happening in bits and pieces without me giving that valuable suggestion. The collective population is getting exposed to more information (thank you internet) and making them think more by default.

Also, people don’t engage critically because people are selfish.

As long as citizens are benefiting from something, like a thought that the BJP has inserted in their brains, they will continue to not think critically about it. Their biases will not let them and BJP knows very well how to reinforce those biases. Doesn’t take a genius to point out that the moment citizens feel they are not getting what they want, they will start asking questions a.k.a. thinking critically.

It’s like how in classrooms when you encounter a mini-dictatorial teacher. If you are a top student who the teacher likes, you will not question the way they deliver their lectures. Because it suits you. You are getting what you want. But if you are someone who is not scoring well or learning much, you will start questions what the fuck is going on. You will stop being enamored by this teacher and might even bitch about how terrible they are with other people who agree. Then you will dream about starting a revolution against this teacher to get them removed.

It’s the same with Government or any other authority. If the actions of an authority benefit you, or you are convinced that it is benefiting you, you will not question it. Questioning an authority takes courage, and most people are too busy living their lives to show that kind of courage. It’s all cool as long as you are cruising through life and passionately working towards your personal goals.

Random advice: If you are a BJP fan, ask yourself a few things from time to time, “I’m a fan of team BJP right now but am I always going to be a fan for my entire life? What am I getting out of it?”

9/10 times your answer will be social validation. The other 1/10 person is actually getting cheap ration in an efficient way. No judgment here, you do you.

(This is for you, YOU, who came to read this after clicking on a link under Chetan Bhagat’s tweet. Welcome welcome.)

Now let’s resume judging Chetan Bhagat.

Understand Thug Psychology

Friend Chetan argues that, in order to be successful, BJP put its ear to the ground and understood what the people really want. Then they went on to use their amazeballs communication skills to pander to those wants, and therefore they continue to be successful.

Look, I’m all for doing market research and understanding customer sentiments to sell your product. That is the capitalist way. If you run a toilet paper company, you need to understand that only a specific kind of customer will want your products. Other folks are aspiring to get jets installed next to their commodes. That sort of understanding of your customer psychology is important. You are running a business after all and profiting by fulfilling the needs of your audience.

But when it comes to political parties, those rules don’t apply.

Meet Pol Pot, the crazy communist fuckhead of Cambodia, who also understood the psychology of the people he wanted to control.

He understood that there was massive frustration in the public and he needed to give them something or someone to blame. Because if he didn’t, then these pesky Cambodians will start asking questions and tHinKinG cRiTtiCaLLy. Then they’ll blame the government and him. His passionate goal was to stay in power, so why not tap into the insecurities of these dumbass hungry poor illiterate Cambodians and use it to redirect the anger.

Potty Pot used the Khmer Rouge (Communist Party of Kampuchea) to redirect the peasant pitchforks towards… people who wear glasses. No seriously, that was one of the subgroup that Pol Pot unleashed public hatred towards. He wanted the entire Cambodian society to be worker based, so any sort of ‘intellectual’ (anyone who thinks) was a target. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, and even people with menial desk jobs was either sent away to labor camps or was tortured, then slaughtered.

As a result, 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians were killed. Great success.

It is displayed in Cambodia at a place called “Killing Fields” for all to see.

Understanding psychology of the public doesn’t take much. There are a few simple rules that every authoritarian with a thirst for power & control employs. For mass manipulation, you need a frustrated bunch of angry people, then you use simple repetitive communication to convince them that the reason for their suffering is not because of the inefficient government, an incompetent leader or an unfair societal structure, “No no,” says our Reverential Supreme Leader. “My lovely people, you are actually suffering because of this evil group of minorities that look different, think different, speak a different language, eat ‘strange’ food, reproduce to grow their numbers… ugh… now go make them suffer. Oh before I forget, here is a war-cry-style slogan which you can scream out while beating people up so that others know why you are doing it. Run along now my thuglings! Have fun!”

On another day, our Supreme Being/Leader asks his followers: “Do you think you are special?” Pause for effect. “You do don’t you? Of course you are special. Now look around you, the majority of people who are exactly like you also think they are special. We belong to the same special culture, wear the same special clothes, speak the same ancient special language, eat the same deliciously special food prepared in a special way… Which means… we are collectively special. And we are collectively right!”

The crowd bursts into appreciative applause with a smattering a random whistling.

“But then why don’t we get treated that way, huh?” Sudden silence. Pause for more effect.

“Why aren’t we given preference over those other people who aren’t special? I mean like, they are a minority and also not special. They are also very wrong because they eat food that is so icky ugh. They look so weird also. So… friends, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, I think its time to prove to the world how special we are by pointing out how evil and not-special they are!”

The crowd goes YEAAAAAAAAH! WE’LL SHOW EM!

See, not so difficult is it? BJP understands that there is a petty thug within everyone. Their need for community validation is stronk, head is filled with insecurities about money, fame, relationships, sex, identity and so much more. This can be exploited to shift blame away from incompetent corrupt government and on some largely made up group of people who won’t be able to stand up for themselves. Because they are a minority, underprivileged and generally so weak.

Dear reader, Chetan is advising you to become such a thug. So don’t become one maybe?

Don’t Care about the Elites

You know what, Chetan is right. These elite English speaking substack blog writers are too much only. They are just screaming through their keyboard about everything that is wrong, but what they say doesn’t really matter. Take this one for instance, look at him, sitting on a Saturday listening to house music, drinking brewed coffee and hammering away to write a long post responding to a popular columnist & author with millions of readers. Is there even a point to this guy?

And some of these Elite Shits write columns in newspapers to give advice to their readers on how to be successful and all, it’s all bullshit. These west-loving English speaking elite snobs don’t know anything.

These are people who went to fancy shmancy English medium educational institutes. Their stupid uneducated parents aspired for their kids to educate themselves in a universal language that, frankly, is in demand everywhere around the world. But hey, those parents were rather stupid to do that. How dare they turn their middle class idiot children into elites, sent them out to dastardly opportunity rich cities like Delhi to study in more elite universities. Their job is to just uselessly complain about everything. Pathethic.

Chetan is right. BJP doesn’t care about these people. They only give a shit about those who don’t do any of that. BJP doesn’t want more elite fucks to be produced, they want more idiot parents who don’t ask questions. And these parents should aspire to send their kids to do English MBBS courses that are written in Devanagari.

By the way, when white English speaking folk praise the BJP, it should make all of us proud. And BJP doesn’t forget to tell us about it. Ever. I mean come on, if Rana Ayyub can praise herself for getting phoren-country-based acclaims, why shouldn’t BJP do it too?

Having said all that, Chetan friend still points out how BJP doesn’t really care about the English speaking elite. It’s all quite confusing because they do care, and there is nothing wrong with highlighting your achievements. In fact, I’d say, that one of their motivation to work so hard might be to get this international validation. I mean, the government is now literally sending SMSes to people about how everyone should feel proud that India got the G20 presidency.

If you thought that the tone of the last few paragraphs was snarky and mean, then you are correct. Bizarre opinions tend to bring out the snarky streak in me. Pretty sure Chetan also writes his column so that the English Speaking Elite can read it, react to it like I did and let Times of India sell more ads when these elites outrage about it. I am self-aware enough to admit that I am feeding that very cycle by writing this random reaction piece.

But hey, must live that elite english-speaking life that my parents wanted me to, amirite?

In conclusion, I’d like to say that I know Chetan Bhagat’s fan-base is very different and they will lap up his learnings, especially if they are politically inclined towards the BJP as well. But then there are people like me who would also like to tell their readers to read between the lines a wee bit, cut the bullshit and then figure out what to Unlearn from the BJP.

From Kanyakumari to Kashmir, the strapping young lad of Indian politics is walking 3570-km to unite the country. Unite the country for what, you ask? That's a bit all over the place.

But hey, the man is trying ok. For all these years you and me have been cursing the Congress for not doing anything, for not countering the BJP properly, for not winning elections and being useless in general. So now, the Leader has stepped out and is… walking.

And sometimes he stops to play football and create camera-friendly candid moments.

As of writing this, he has already covered 2000+ kilometers and is currently in Rajasthan. If you go through RG’s Instagram, you’ll see many many images-building imagery being shared and getting a good amount of response.

In fact, I’d say that the entire point of this walkathon is to create an enviable Instagram profile for Rahul Gandhi. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Why are they doing this? Will it lead to anything at all? Will it get them votes?

All legit questions, but before giving you the answers, I need to do some buildup.

The creation of “pappu”

It was January 2014. General Elections are four months away and a savior has stepped onto the national stage: Adarniya Shri Sir Narendra Damodardas Modi

On that fateful day in January, Human Loudspeaker Arnab Goswami sat down with Rahul Gandhi to do his ‘first formal interview’. Right off the bat, Arnab asked Rahul why he is running away from a direct fight against Narendra Modi. Why isn’t he the PM candidate for Congress?

Rahul responded by saying, “You need to understand what Rahul Gandhi stands for and believes to get an answer for this question”, then randomly went on to ask Arnab why he was a journalist, followed it up by explaining how his lost his father, then some stuff about mythology, unfairness of the system and how people are suffering.

A very obvious point to note here: Congress was in power when RG gave this interview.

In case you haven’t seen this legendary interview, you must be wondering, “That’s so random”. Yes. The entire 1 hour 20 minute interview was super random. It was clear that Rahul was not prepared, his thoughts were disorganized, and Arnab actually did a decent job of asking him tough questions which RG, frankly speaking, couldn’t answer.

Instead, he chose to make faces like these.

That, according to the author of this piece, would be when the downfall of Rahul Gandhi began and the rise of Pappu started. You remember it, don’t you? The word “Pappu”? The BJP consistently used it in those days to deride Rahul, essentially calling him a dumbfuck and the offspring of a privileged dynasty. And it worked.

From 2014 till date, Rahul hasn’t really been able to recover from that blow to his image and continues to be seen as largely incompetent. What made it worse is the behavior of his own party people. Instead of realistically looking at what people were saying about him, trying to counter it and genuinely train their Leader to not be absolutely random on live TV, the party folk started defending him. They defended him, the Gandhis and everything connected to the two. And they did it with absolute arrogance of a party that thinks it is the ‘default party’ for India.

BJP and Adarniya were absolutely delighted with such behavior.

SIDENOTE: I think Rahul & friends have realized that they need to somehow make people forget about the 2012-2014 years, so they are giving new reasons as to why the media started attacking RG & ruining his image. Just check his currently pinned tweet.

Kicking a Dead Body is fun

Ever since Narendra Modi came onto the stage, his sole purpose has been to curse everything that the Congress has done in the past, does in the present and will do in the future. It doesn’t matter whether the criticism is valid or not, whether the facts are correct or not, what matters is that Adarniya needs to be a bit snarky about the whole thing. Like a Whatsapp uncle with a massive inferiority complex, he laughs at the opponents and jeers at them. Why bother telling people what you have done in life, when you can just point at the failures of others and make fun of them?

If he was a standup comedian, Adarniya would use Rahul Gandhi as a punchline for every darn joke.

Why did the chicken cross the road, Bhaiyo aur Behno?
Because Rahul Gandhi is such a chicken haha kukudukoo.

A Hindu, Muslim and Christian walk into a pub.
The bartender is Rahul Gandhi who is so secular haha what a loser hahaha.

(Yes, Adarniya is not a very good comedian, I know. Even in my head.)

Congress has been losing elections after elections since 2014, with some minor successes on the state level here and there. But largely, their electoral graph has been tanking. In the public imagination, the party is largely dead and there is no chance for revival. But the biggest cheerleaders of Congress today are Adarniya, BJP folks and their supporters.

They want to continue to point at the dead body of Congress and blame it for all the ills that people are facing. They like kicking it again and again, trying to get it to move. The chimps on TV news see the body moving and make a big deal out of it.

“The hand moved a little bit today after Adarniya kicked it and what a movement it was!” they scream. “What a kick by Adarniya! Greatest kick of all time! Coming after this break, we will discuss for 3 hours whether the other hand moved also a little bit and, after that, tomorrow, we will discuss whether the body shifted 2 centimeters to the right.”

Adarniya tries very hard, all the time, obsessively, to make fun of the Gandhis and Congress. He blames them every time he gets a chance, just to make himself look better. And his followers follow that very strategy.

Take two recent examples of this.

1. “Congress made me Reproduce": BJP MP Ravi Kishan went on Aaj Tak the other day. He was about to present a private members bill in Parliament with the objective of controlling population, so the anchor asked Kishan whether he’s being hypocritical. You see, our friend Ravi Kishan has 4 kids and he’s presenting a law asking others to produce only two.

   To which, Kishan sir responded saying it’s the Congress’s fault that he has four kids. “If the Congress had brought in a population control bill before 2014, then I wouldn’t have produced four kids,” he said, while the crowd clapped along.

   If only a condom brand could have strategically placed an ad somewhere in the middle, that would be best. Overall, very entertaining content.

2. “Congress called me Ravan”: In the recent Gujarat elections, people have been wondering, ‘Where is the Congress? Why aren’t they campaigning?’. Throughout the campaign, not a single word was uttered by a big Congress leader against the Prime Minister, so the media didn’t bother to cover any of their campaigns. That was until, newly minted party President Mallikarjun Kharge made an offhand remark and said Adarniya was like ‘a hundred headed Raavan’.

   Obviously, Modi and BJP were overjoyed and used it to kick the body again. Adarniya was like, “The competition is on who can abuse Modi more, who can deliver the most stinging attack… Some calls me a demon, some says cockroach…”

   On top of that, for added effect, he declared, “These people who don’t believe in the existence of Ram are calling me Ravan.”

Both these instances are just two in a long line of instances which prove how the BJP wants the Congress to be (barely) alive. It’s easy for BJP to curse the Gandhis and Congress. It practically requires no effort but always makes Adarniya look good.

BJP itself might be a party on a ventilator, but it looks amazing next to a dead person.

Bharat Jodo Yatra = CPR

So we have a dead body that BJP keeps kicking from time to time, TV wolves keep howling about it and people keep ignoring it. Consequently, nobody wants to vote for INC.

“It’s time to do something about it,” said the Congress. “I agree,” said Rahul, while he put on his running shoes before the morning sprint.

If Congress is the body then the Gandhis are its heart. This Bharat Jodo Yatra is their attempt to give CPR to the heart, ergo Rahul himself. They desperately want RG’s “Pappu” image to go away. So the Bharat Jodo Yatra is a PR exercise to do exactly that.

By showing Rahul Gandhi on the streets, interacting with people, walking constantly and hugging folks all the time, they are trying to make him look more relatable. Will it work?

Well, as far as content goes, the INC has a lot of it now. They can use these captured candid moments for all sorts of things, like advertisements leading up to 2024.

And guess what, they are doing that.

Not just that, they are now launching a series of conversations which Rahul has done with people during his travels.

As a wise man once said, “Content is King”. The Congress seems to have realized that they need to pour in a lot of money into creating relatable content which positions Rahul Gandhi as someone who connects with people. Personally speaking, I’d rather watch these interactions than listen to the Mann Ki Baat diatribe every month. So while Adarniya doesn’t take any questions, Rahul Gandhi does the opposite. All he does is answer questions that people are posing to him.

It might be a great strategy to build up his image but will it translate into votes? It’s difficult to say at this point in time. We still have a year and a half before the 2024 general elections, with a smattering of state elections in the middle. Once this Yatra concludes, my guess is the real promotions will start. We will be battered with imagery of a relatable Rahul Gandhi and probably even attack ads showing how distant Modi has become from his voters after coming to power.

Another thing worth noting is the change in RG himself. He has definitely come a long way from that damaging 2012 interview to these interactions during the Yatra. Plus, if you have been following the content coming out of the Yatra, it’s obvious that he is meeting a whole host of people who are coming up to him and sharing their problems.

Perhaps, maybe, just maybe, this would give RG an idea of what needs to be done to solve some of these issues. Maybe, just maybe, this actually might turn into a tapasya for him which will reveal the truths of the modern world, providing real ground inputs and sparking the idea bulb in his head. Something that he desperately needs and so does his party.

If you want to look at Indian democracy as a contest of winning votes by hook or crook to come to power — which is a very cynical view IMHO — then you might not see the point of this entire exercise. You will always wonder, “Haan this is all ok but will it translate into votes?”

Legit question, but I’m personally tired of asking that question.

If you are someone who looks at democracy as a way for citizens to raise their voices, to question their governments, to hold leaders accountable and make progress as a civilized nation, then you will see some hope here.

And hope is never a bad thing.

Is the Bharat Jodo Yatra pointless?

One word: No.

Welcome to bulletin two

Hello, and welcome to this thing. This thing is where you get to read thoughts on politics and policy by a dude called Meghnad. Meghnad has previously worked in Parliament as a speech-writer, legislative researcher and then went on to embrace the chaos of the Indian news ecosystem.

He also thinks that referring to himself in third person might be a cool thing to do.

1. Why you should read this?

It’s a just another take on politics in the giant country called India. But hopefully this one will be more real and unfiltered than the rest because the author, Meghnad, is known for such shit.

Subscribe now

2. What kind of people should read this?

Largely, curious people who want to know what is happening around them and also have the ability to not take too many things too seriously. Because if you take things written in this newsletter too seriously, you will end up blaming the author, Meghnad, who continues to refer to himself in third person. That won’t be advisable, so don’t.

3. Should you pay money for this?

To put it bluntly, yes. Because that would be an incentive for the author to keep writing and entertaining you, feeding your brain with thoughts that it wants to be fed with. This newsletter is very REAL ok. Your brain might trip on it and drugs are valuable. So yes, pay.

4. What does the author look like?

The author of this newsletter, Meghnad.

ok he sort of looks like this. Kinda.

5. Thank you for doing this

Very kind of you to say that. Let’s hope this lasts and you regularly keep getting things to read in your inbox.

Subscribe now