Weekend Thoughts

While writing this blog on Friday afternoon, primarily there are two thoughts in my mind, one is about the Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi, and the other is about today’s morning incident at Elphinstone Road Station in Mumbai, where 22 people have lost their lives in a tragic  way and more than 30 people have been injured.

1.  Eliphinstone Road  Incident- Let me first give a brief detail of this area, this area is in Central part of Mumbai where many of the old textile mills were located, and the workers  who were employed in the mills used to reside in the nearby localities. As most of the workers lived nearby they either used to commute to their work place either by walking or by BEST buses, and few used to travel by local trains. Elphinstone Road  is a station on the Western Railway, which is also connected to Parel Station  on the Central Railway by foot bridge of Mumbai Local Train Network. As both Parel and Elphinstone Road  Stations are on slow route of locals train, because  there  were not much commuter traffic , but over the area as the Textile mills closed down and in their place modern high  rise buildings came up for offices and presently there are thousands of offices in the area, and there by commuter traffic at Elphinstone Road Station has increased.

  Let us see what happened today morning, time is about 9.30 am. Outside it is raining heavily and no body was expecting heavy rains because   people have thought rainy  season has ended, because for last 5/6 days Mumbai had become unbearbly hot. So people stopped at railway bridge and  staircase which was leading to exit. No body knows what happened next , people started slipping on the bridge because of wet floor due to rain and suddenly people started pushing each other and stampede like situation happened, which became very serious when people starting falling over each other and that led to calamity where 22 people lost there lives and many were injured seriously.

After the incident, there was long list of politicians who visited the stampede site to shed crocodile tears, and they were Sharad Pawar, his daughter Supriya Sule, Raj Thackerey, Udhav Thackerey, Railway minister Piyush Goel who was in Mumbai, Kirit Sommaiya and many more. Surprisingly today officially  Elipphinstone Road Station was to be renamed as Prabhadevi, and it was Shiv Sena who proposed the name change. Our political parties are only interested about changing the names of the stations but they never bothered about commuters problems. The narrow railway bridge, narrow stair case and narrow exit passage which led to today’s stampede were long pending complains of the commuters but no political party listened to them  and pressurised the Railways to resolve this issue. I hope the authorities wake up now and do some thing about it so that no similar incidents will occur in future.

2. Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi- It looks like Rahul Gandhi is following into the foot steps of  Hindutva brigade. In the year 2007 he gave a statement that lord Rama is a myth, in 2013 he talked about Saffron terror, in 2014 he made a statement that temple going people eve tease, and in   2017 he has started visiting temples, as seen during his recent Gujarat yatra, where Congress started the campaign for 2017 Gujarat Elections, it looks like he wanted to garner the votes from Hindu voters. Secondly from whom he takes help during Gujarat tour, it is none other than Hardik Patel, who started demand for reservations for Patel community few years back which slowly fizzled out, and as the Elections are approaching this demand will be raised again  and Rahul Gandhi will lend his support. So it only means that other than Modi bashing and this reservations issue Rahul Gandhi has nothing to offer to Gujarat Public.

Instead of launching hate Modi campaign and  bashing Modi on every issue, can Rahul Gandhi  brief the voter what he is going to do if he wins the elections in states or centre. Every Congress leaders talk about inflation, Petrol prices. Can Rahul Gandhi tell the general public how can he cut down the inflation or reduce the Petrol prices without giving any subsidy. No he can not tell, because he has got no answer, at least Modi had the guts to reduce the subsidy on Petroleum products and used the said amount in upliftment of  poor by giving LPG connections and power to villagers. Just because few people listened  to him in USA, Congress has started thinking that their Pappu has become  global leader like Modi, but he and congressmen should understand that to reach to Modi’s level globally he might need few decades and Modi just took few years. Rahul had full one decade to become some sort of leader when UPA was ruling but he slept over, because he thought as he is born in Gandhi family, it is his birth right to rule and become PM, but he has forgotten those days are over, when all of sudden after the death of Indira Gandhi his father Rajiv Gandhi became PM, yes he could have become PM in 2014 if there was no Narendra Modi / BJP, and in his leadership Congress suffered their worst defeat ever. Now a  days if you go to social media you will find anti Modi campaign and few surveys carried out by some unknown media agencies which are showing Congress will win next elections in Gujarat, Karnataka, Himachal , Chattisgarh and other states, friends if you see those surveys you will start laughing. More will follow on this topic in my future blogs.

In the end, what you say my friends.

Awaiting for your feed backs and comments.