Reality Bites: Egg-jam Worriers!   

Right now, all around me Indians are wide-eyed and stuttering, “It’s a train...It’s a plane...It’s Stupidman!”

Gasps began to be heard when Union Railway Minister Piyush Einstein Newton Goyal (yes the same chap who kept losing Shramik trains as frequently as Little Bo Peep lost her sheep) discovered in July 2020 that trains are absobloominlutely fantastic inventions that carry not just people but other things as well, and was totally wowed-out. He posted an awestruck tweet “Trucks on Trains: Railways enhances automobile transport in India,” to express his wonderment. No one is astonished that he never knew trains could do all that and more before because the smartest man in the BJP has proved many times over that he spent his school years snoring gently on a back bench.

Piggy-like squeals were heard soon after when five Rafale fighter jets arrived in India. Evidently news anchors on all Indian channels sweetly believed that Indian Air Force pilots flew by holding big bunches of birthday party gas balloons before the Rafales arrived, and they were so happy they had tears pouring down their cheeks.

Their squeals of joy became so embarrassing that many of us heaved a sigh of relief when ex-army officer, defence reporter and founder of Force magazine, Pravin Sawhney tweeted: “I was asked by a prominent TV channel to give minute-by-minute commentary when Rafale touch Indian soil today afternoon. Said NO. Was left wondering what the brouhaha was all about? Perhaps to pep up own people that PLA will now be thrown out soon!”

Yes, the RSS-BJP and their merry bunch of ‘arrested’ adolescents’ (people who have never grown after their teens) want you to believe that the country our supreme leader is too scared to name will turn tail and run home crying because we have five new fighter jets!

And then we had the first full blown Hollywood blockbuster grade cry (“It’s a train... It’s a plane...It’s Stupidman!”) when the BJP government announced a complete rehaul of the education system in India (without a discussion in Parliament first of course, because they don’t like answering questions).

The very first thing they did was to change the name of the ministry from HRD to Education, probably because saying Human Resource Development was very, well “hrd” for them. The announcement of the changes was made by India’s most famous Eggjam Worrier, the chap who allegedly has a fake degree in a subject called Entire Political Science.

Many of his ministers have lied about their education and allegedly have fake degrees too, most shockingly former HRD minister Smriti Irani and current HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal. If Ms Irani is anything to go by, then a three-day course in anything at Yale University qualifies as a true blue degree.

The government that completely destroyed the economy with demonetisation and GST well before Covid-19 was even heard of, is all set to do the same to education. They have threatened to rewrite text books too, so expect their bigotry, superstition, and contempt for facts to shine through. For example, the Rajputs could well be portrayed as descendants of blonde Vikings who lost their way like Piyush Goyal’s trains.

It’s not just your kids who will suffer, you will bear the brunt too. Take your mind back to the Vajpayee era when Murli Manohar Joshi was the HRD Minister. A horrified social activist informed me that religion was sneakily introduced in test books, telling children to urge their mothers to fast on different days of the week. Under Narendra Modi, it will be more blatant and far worse.

The aim of the government is to make Indians so stupid that questions won’t be asked on the economy, frequent intelligence failures, surgical strikes that only manage to kill crows, electoral bonds, etc. So far, only their voters are as stupid as they are. By introducing English only from class five, they are trying to ensure that Indians lose the most valuable lingua franca and with it their competitive edge in the international arena. Don’t worry about the wealthy elite lot—they have the means to buy better for their kids.

A twitter buddy Abhijeet Oundhakar summed up the BJP’s new education policy best with a Robert A. Heinlein quote: “They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly.

They despise brains because they have none.”