When armchair elite step out of their ivory tower, listen to real India

We should ensure that our daughters are not discriminated against vis a vis the boys and are accorded equal dignity and space for individual growth and contribution to society. In Uttar Pradesh, we have tried to end discriminatory practices against women through the programme of Kanyadhan, where the state provides adequate grants for their higher education and marriage. I see the empowerment of women as a necessary precondition for the overall empowerment of society and the nation.

We have come through a phase when cataclysmic changes are taking place around the globe. Information technology and finance capital have shrunk the world into a global village and barriers of distance and knowledge have been eroded. Yet there are some movements which are regressive, feudal and discriminatory in nature.

There have been attempts by the armchair anglicized elite to berate the significant socio-political changes that have taken place in the last three decades. They refuse to come out of their ivory towers and continue to pontificate about the system through educational institutions, bureaucracy and mass media.

To me, India should shine for each of its citizens and not just for a select few. So empowerment should mean that any citizen of this nation has an equal right to don the mantle of Prime Minister and not just any one particular class, that too in succession on the lines of the medieval notion of the divine rights of the king.

India empowered to me is when there is politics of tolerance, grace and dignity and not one of arrogance and senseless hatred.