Governments are meant to provide good governance. But these days more and more governments are indulging in populist measures rather than being keen for the welfare of people. Even after being in government, they always think about vote banks. The governments take steps to please one section of people or the other and in the process defeats the very essence of democracy of providing justice to each and every citizen. In earlier days, the opposition used to accuse Congress for being too soft towards minorities to garner votes. But now when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, it is blindly following the footsteps of Congress of consolidating its vote bank by appeasement.
Simply driven by the appeasement logic BJP Government has now changed the name of iconic Mughalsarai Station to Deen Dayal Upadhaya Station. Clearly, BJP thinks that the move will consolidate its vote share as the late Upadhaya is among the tallest rightist leaders of Independent India. Though some may differ with the ideology he followed, there is no denying that he was one of the notable sons of India. Every Indian should feel proud about him. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the fourth busiest junction of Indian Railways should be named to honour his memory. If such a trend continues, soon we will have to change the names of every railway station of the country.
Since its inception, Indian Railways has followed the principle of naming railway stations after the places. Various requests of changing the names of railway stations in memory of a particular person were rejected by the railways citing the same principle. Two notable exceptions were made in memory of two famous Bengali stalwarts. Gomoh Junction in Jharkhand was renamed as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Gomoh Junction as the leading figure of Indian freedom struggle left the country to wage a war against the British catching the Kalka Mail from this very station. The other station is Karmartar in Jharkhand. It is now known as Vidyasagar station. It has been done as the noted social reformer and educationist of 19th Century spend few years of his life there. On the other hand, Indian Railways has many times rejected the demand of renaming the Silchar station in memory of those who lost their lives during the Language Agitation (Bhasha Andolon) in early sixties. There are some other similar proposals are also pending with Indian Railways.
So the dynamics of changing the name of Mughalsarai Junction is easily understandable. Since coming to power with record majority more than a year ago, BJP Government in Uttar Pradesh instead of implementing schemes for the welfare of the people it is now trying to divert the attention of the people from the real issues. The ruling BJP may try to publicise that by changing the name of the said railway station, it has honoured one of its strongest leaders. But will that step really ease the lives of crores of people of the state? Will the step be able to bring down the prices of essential commodities? Will it guarantee improved law and order situation in the state? Will the move solve the farm crisis? So, instead of counting gains of renaming, the Uttar Pradesh government should keep it in mind that its power is limited to change the names of certain places, but people have the power to change the government.
