When the world changed

When the verdict came on May 16, giving the BJP 282 of the Lok Sabha's 543 elected seats, it was clear that the world had changed - due to the sheer scale of the victory and the implications this would have for the Congress dynasty.

For the first time since 1984, when the Congress, riding a sympathy wave under Rajiv Gandhi, following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, won a huge 414-seat majority in the Lok Sabha, India is looking at a stable government that could govern on its own without having to look over its shoulder due to the compulsions of coalition politics.

Does the BJP victory also mean that India, which set the trend of dynastic rule in South Asia, would be one to buck this? What delightful possibilities this raises!

Do I detect a skeptical note that there were only three defining moments for me in the 21st century? I never said that. There have been any number of moments when my world changed but that was my world.

All too often, as journalists, we tend to take a limited view of things. We tend to forget that we have a larger role to play - that of social scientists chronicling the times.

The job of a journalist is not to merely report but record events for posterity. By that yardstick and from the Indian perspective, those were the three days that changed the world.