DailyPost 2661
THE LAKSHAMAN REKHA STORY
You would have heard any number of times that our political class, more so the political executive carry their own goal post and they score goals at will. They are the goalkeeper and referee too. They pronounce that the rules of the game are being followed, to the wide world and that nothing incongruous has happened and they will not allow it to happen either. If this has become the norm and, in all likelihood, it is so, then how does fairness and sanity come into the picture and it would be an uphill tasks to make an objective, empirical, fair and transparent government and governance a reality.
Lot of aberrations emanating out of this system, we have learnt to live with. Only a truncated system is the final aspiration of the masses and nothing beyond it. But that also not satisfied the powers that be, and even an expression of the malaise and associated issues seem to hurt them to a considerable level. Mostly it used for expressions in public domain but it has extended to other public domain activities of our file too. The unseen social geofencing they talk about is Lakshman Rekha. Lakshman Rekha is an imaginary line, or a level or a threshold or an utterance or an activity that cannot be broken into or indulged in.
It is presumed to be an outrage of the conscience collective; it hurts the feeling of that group or community and at times is supposed to mean the whole nation, or the leadership or even governments. In reality it does impact anyone and nobody is bothered about it, but the powers or the power group that be, found their apple cart getting unsettled. These groups are within and outside of governments, in civil society, media outlets and a host of other organisations. They decide on a Lakshman Rekha or someone influential or aggressive fellow states it, has one round of action or public domain utterance/ protests and the rest follow suit. The social media army takes over the task to shame anybody till the he moves out to be an obstacle in the hidden designs of the powers that be.
When there are any number of Lakshman Rekhas, quite carefully curated, calibrated and pushed in for immediate compliance, by large number of organizations under the same ecosystem; be sure that the Lakshman Rekha bandwagon is there to stay. They would slowly start to dictate terms to any recalcitrant elements, however sober and worthwhile they might be. The Lakshman Rekha may have a backend rationale and acceptance and it is slowly divulged. The channels of communication today are much stronger, sharper, invasive and toxic, which makes the tasks of these baiters pretty easy. The Lakshman Rekhas freelance implementers slowly become more idiosyncratic, more compelling moving from the fringes to gaining control over everything. They become the prima donnas.
LAKSHMAN REKHAS TRY TO PUSH EVERY OTHER MANDOTARY RULE OR NORM OR CONVENTIONAL WISDOM TO THE PERIPHERY.
Sanjay Sahay