Greetings,
This week, I have three articles to share with you.
In Party polls to benefit Congress, published in Manorama, I write on the upcoming elections to the post of president of the Congress Party, in which I am a candidate. While the party’s values and ideas remain powerful and effective, organizational deficits have meant that we are far behind where we should be, electorally. My manifesto is in favour of top-to-bottom reorganisation to empower grassroots-level workers and re-energise the party. Though I am seen as the underdog, I believe standing is the right thing to do, and that this election will strengthen the Congress.
For The Week, continuing the theme of the Congress Party’s future, I argue: Congress must truly become the party of young India. One of my candidacy’s core planks has been to increase our emphasis on the power of youth. With our demographic advantages and world-class universities, India’s young people could make our country a growth powerhouse – but a sluggish economy, educational failures, and widespread under- and unemployment have caused a crisis. The party must tap into this widespread dissatisfaction and truly understand the aspirations and hopes of young Indians if we are to solve this critical problem.
Finally, for my weekly column on words for the Khaleej Times’ WKND magazine, I write on pleonasms – redundant words. From a “burning fire” to “12 midnight”, here are a few of the best – you might find some unexpected surprises!
1. Party polls to benefit Congress; Manorama; October 7, 2022.
I believe that a fresh leader, who has not been jaded by being entrenched within the current system for too long, could do both — energise a party that certainly needs it, and at the same time, appeal to more voters than the Congress managed to during the last few elections. A democratic contest will bring vibrancy at all levels by prompting a healthy and constructive discussion on reforms.
2. Congress must truly become the party of young India; The Week; October 9, 2022.
When I entered the race to become president of the Indian National Congress, one of my key campaign themes was to increase our party’s emphasis on youth. As the immortal Rajiv Gandhi once memorably said in his famous address to a joint meeting of the US Congress, “India is an old country but a young nation… I am young and I, too, have a dream, I dream of India strong, independent, self-reliant, and in the front rank of the nations of the world, in the service of mankind”. In the three decades that have passed since his tragic passing, that characterisation of India and our youthful demographic remains truer than ever and must be a core focus area for the Congress party.
3. Here are the most common pleonasms you need to avoid using; WKND, Khaleej Times; October 6, 2022.
A couple of columns ago we discussed “unnecessary” words, taking a swipe at legalese in particular for piling word upon phrase to say the simplest things. There’s a particular term for the use of superfluous words: pleonasm, a term derived from a Greek word that means “excess”. A pleonasm uses two or more words, of which one is redundant, to express an idea. The classic example of a two-word pleonasm is “burning fire” (after all, a fire, by definitions, burns) and that of a whole pleonastic phrase is “I saw it with my own eyes”.
The complete text of each article is below. As always, if these are getting too much, feel free to unsubscribe below.
With warm regards,
Shashi Tharoor
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Party polls to benefit Congress,
October 7, 2022,
Manorama.
Since my last column, my life has been consumed by race for the Presidency of the Indian National Congress party. Though the party election is an internal exercise, it also represents an opportunity to ignite widespread public interest in the Congress and to galvanise its party workers. When, following the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Rahul Gandhi offered his resignation as the party’s president to take accountability for our stinging defeat, I was one of many who tried to talk him out of it. At the end of the day, he stuck to his decision and we must respect that.
The longer the Congress waits to get its act together, the greater the risk of its erosion, as we have seen in recent years. The party elections have changed the narrative — together with the Bharat Jodo Yatra they have brought unprecedented public interest in the party — and a leader elected by the party workers will have a great advantage in addressing organisational challenges, as well as the process of rebuilding that is required to internally strengthen our rank and file. Such a President would have extra legitimacy in reaching out to the public for support. I am proud to say my nomination papers received signatures of support from ordinary party workers from Kashmir to Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to Tamil Nadu, Punjab to Nagaland.
The immediate priority that must be addressed, whosoever is elected, is to develop and implement a roadmap that will allow the party to find a way to appeal beyond the 19% of the electorate that voted for the party in both 2014 and 2019. The party has to appeal to those who did not vote for it in those two elections and drifted away to the BJP, most of whom did so for reasons other than Hindutva. This would require a leader who, while anchored in the history of the party, looks beyond the past to speak to the aspirations of young India — one who firmly believes the party can set the country on the route to a better society, one that is ready to take on the opportunities offered by the world of the 21st century. The challenge, therefore, for the Congress is twofold: We need to both articulate a positive and aspirational vision for the nation as well as work to fix the organisational and structural deficiencies that have impeded our recent efforts.
To my mind the answer lies in a combination of effective leadership and organisational reform. This is why I have put forward a manifesto that re-imagines the organisational culture in the party in order to decentralise authority and truly empower the grassroots office-bearers of the party. Delegating powers to State leaders and empowering grassroots workers will not only free the new leader from the onerous burdens of over-administration but also help create the strong State leadership that in past eras strengthened the Congress’s national appeal.
I believe that a fresh leader, who has not been jaded by being entrenched within the current system for too long, could do both — energise a party that certainly needs it, and at the same time, appeal to more voters than the Congress managed to during the last few elections. A democratic contest will bring vibrancy at all levels by prompting a healthy and constructive discussion on reforms.
Therefore, I have taken the decision to contest for three principal reasons. For one, I share the view of the Congress President and of Shri Rahul Gandhi that a democratic contest will only strengthen the party. I am also contesting because I have several ideas to reform and re-energise our party after our recent electoral setbacks, end the “High Command” culture and empower the grassroots, increase consultative mechanisms and give our ordinary workers or “karyakartas” more respect and access to the leadership at all levels.
Prior to my entering the fray I have been assured by the Congress President as well as former President Rahul Gandhi that they welcome a free and fair election, will stay neutral and will not back any “official candidate”. I appreciate that I am widely seen as the underdog in this race, and that many people believe the establishment will come together to defend their own interests in the status quo. To those who are urging me to withdraw in the interests of “consensus”, I believe that having a healthy and constructive exchange of ideas for reform and for the future of the party will ultimately both strengthen the Congress and intensify the interest we command in the national consciousness. Sometimes one must have the courage of one’s convictions to do the right thing, regardless of the likely outcome. I have always felt that if one believes strongly enough in something, one must be prepared to stick one’s neck out for it. It is an approach that has guided me in both my personal and political life. But whoever wins, the party should be the ultimate beneficiary.
Tailpiece: the campaign trail can be exhausting, as one seeks to visit a dozen cities in a little over two weeks and reach as many of the nearly 10,000 delegates by phone as possible. But sometimes there can be an unexpected bonus that lifts the spirits, as when, on my flight from Hyderabad to Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, the pilot, Captain Inderpreet Singh, announced a “special welcome to Dr Shashi Tharoor who is on board” and the passengers broke out into applause. I spent most of the rest of the flight obliging fellow travellers with selfies, though some young students, even in this era of ubiquitous cameras, came seeking autographs. This ability of politics to touch the hearts of such a wide variety of people is what makes the effort all worthwhile in the end.
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Congress must truly become the party of young India,
October 9, 2022,
The Week.
When I entered the race to become president of the Indian National Congress, one of my key campaign themes was to increase our party’s emphasis on youth. As the immortal Rajiv Gandhi once memorably said in his famous address to a joint meeting of the US Congress, “India is an old country but a young nation… I am young and I, too, have a dream, I dream of India strong, independent, self-reliant, and in the front rank of the nations of the world, in the service of mankind”. In the three decades that have passed since his tragic passing, that characterisation of India and our youthful demographic remains truer than ever and must be a core focus area for the Congress party.
Today’s ruling dispensation often speaks about building a new India but any conversation on this topic must begin by looking at the interests of India’s future, our youth. After all, who else are we building this ‘New India’ for if not the young? We have trained world-class scientists and engineers, but 431 million of our compatriots are illiterate, and we have more children who have not seen the inside of a school than any other country in the world does. We have a great demographic advantage with the majority of the population under 25 and a startling 65 per cent under 35. This is potentially a young, dynamic labour force and could deliver to us that demographic ‘dividend’ so often proclaimed across global platforms. China, Japan, and even South Korea (our major East Asian competitors) are facing a serious demographic squeeze, and the rest of the world is ageing. India’s youth should not only be part of India’s development, but drive it. This requires us to provide our young people with both education and employment opportunities on an unprecedented scale. This is not happening.
Young people may be celebrated as bhagyavidhatas by our prime minister, but their current reality is one of shrinking opportunities. Record lows in job creation are compounded by a depressed economy still recovering from the devastation of the pandemic, the negative effect of demonetisation and the rushed implementation of GST, and now the inflationary consequences of the Ukraine war. And recent policy measures, including government promises to create just 12 lakh jobs a year in a country where 5.30 crore are currently unemployed and 47.5 lakh job seekers enter the market each year—suggests that the government is unlikely to turn things around. This grim scenario represents both a cause and an opportunity for the Congress. For the INC to start winning again, we can and should appeal to the large untapped political potential of unemployed youth, youth-heavy workplaces (notably the IT sector) and migrant hotspots. To take back the technocratic leadership of the nation, Congress has a large role to play via job fairs, skilling expos, and developing industry collaborations.
Our youth focused party bodies like the National Student’s Union of India (NSUI) and the Youth Congress must lead the way in these efforts and play a critical role beyond the good work being done by these frontals in organising large nationwide movements and mass protests. To strengthen their capacity, we need to embark on a meaningful revamp to make these and other Congress frontal organisations like Seva Dal our focus of attention for youth issues. Young Indians must believe we understand their aspirations and can be trusted to promote them in government. It has been painful to see the struggles of young India being reduced to rhetoric with little thought for their realisation. When the dust settles, the youth are left on the margins, mere observers to economic growth. Ad hoc policies to improve the opportunities available for India’s youth are clearly insufficient for the size of the problem that we are facing, let alone what it can grow to in the future.
We in the Congress must work to include young people in India’s development by ensuring that their skills are developed, their aspirations understood and their voices protected. We need grown-up economic management, not slogans and sound-bites. The Congress must truly become the party of young India.
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Here are the most common pleonasms you need to avoid using,
October 6, 2022,
WKND, Khaleej Times.
A couple of columns ago we discussed “unnecessary” words, taking a swipe at legalese in particular for piling word upon phrase to say the simplest things. There’s a particular term for the use of superfluous words: pleonasm, a term derived from a Greek word that means “excess”. A pleonasm uses two or more words, of which one is redundant, to express an idea. The classic example of a two-word pleonasm is “burning fire” (after all, a fire, by definitions, burns) and that of a whole pleonastic phrase is “I saw it with my own eyes”. If you saw it you had to have used your own eyes, right? The same holds true for “heard with my own ears” and “touched with my own hands” — you can’t touch with someone else’s hands or hear with someone else’s ears!
Whereas an oxymoron (like “open secret” or “act naturally”) combines two contradictory terms, a pleonasm uses synonymous ones, like “armed gunman” (if he’s a gunman, he’s armed) or “tuna fish“ (if it’s tuna, it’s a fish). A pleonasm isn’t the same as a tautology, which is a repetition of the same idea in different words. A pleonasm uses redundant, superfluous words you don’t really need — which is what I just did in this sentence to make my point!
What are the most common pleonasms you need to be conscious of and avoid? “Advance planning” and “advance warning” are widespread: if you plan or warn, you always do so in advance, so why add the word? The same with “mix together”, once you mix something it obviously gets the elements together; you can’t mix something apart! Similarly, “close proximity”, “empty hole”, “exact replica”, and “young child” — the noun contains the meaning that the adjective seeks to add, so why not drop the adjective? My fellow Indians are often guilty of saying they will “return back” — an Indianism and a pleonasm all in one!
One of the best examples of a sentence combining three or four pleonasms in one is: “It was an unexpected surprise when a pair of baby twins was born at 12 midnight”. A surprise, after all, can hardly be expected; twins always come in pairs; midnight can only come at 12 — so none of those extra words were necessary. And the fourth pleonasm? Can anyone be born who is not a baby? All four pleonasms could have been avoided by simply saying “They were surprised when twins were born at midnight.”
Our daily lives are full of pleonasms — shops trying to tempt us with “free gifts” (if it’s a gift it had better be free!), advertisements for “hot water heaters” (if your water is already hot, why does it need heating?), travel agencies asking us to make “advance reservations” (reservations have to be in advance of your going anywhere), mechanics breaking your things down to their “component parts” (a component is a part), friends telling you they did something on a “sudden impulse” (acting impulsively is always sudden), and even English teachers telling you to avoid “overused clichés” (a cliché is, by definition, a term rendered trite by overuse). Every one of these phrases could have benefited from deleting the first word in them.
It is, however, true that pleonasms are not always to be avoided. Orators love them as a rhetorical device to drive their point home: politicians will declaim their promises that they will deliver you services “free, gratis, and you will pay nothing at all”. Indeed, pleonasms are also an accepted literary device used for emphasis by some authors and not just speakers. They were rendered respectable by no less an eminence than William Shakespeare, in whose Julius Caesar there appears the famous pleonastic phrase, “This was the most unkindest cut of all…” If it was the “unkindest”, it was already the “most unkind”, and if you wrote this in a high school essay, your teacher would be expected to put a big red circle around the phrase “most unkindest”. But Shakespeare is, well, Shakespeare, and he got away with this horrific pleonasm — which is not to say you would.
In keeping with the pleonastic spirit, I will return to the topic next week!
–> Copyright © 2021 Shashi Tharoor, All rights reserved.
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97, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi 110 003.
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Shashi Tharoor · 97, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi 110 003 · New Delhi, 110003 · India
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