While the rest of the world sits with diaries open and gym memberships renewed, resolving to drink more water and scroll less, something far more honest happens in the capital of India. An army gathers.
Not to change. Not to improve. But to reaffirm continuity.
This is not a resolution meeting. This is an oath taking.
Hands are raised, chests puffed, as the oath is shouted with conviction. We resolve to continue misinforming the people of this country about reality. No hesitation there. Truth is a slippery thing anyway. Why burden the public with it when falsehoods are lighter and louder.
We will build bridges and roads, they declare, but we will not show how weak they are. The cracks are inconvenient. The audits unnecessary. After all, the commissions taken from contractors are what truly strengthen the party.
Cement may crumble, but party coffers must not.
We will continue telling the people we are racing to becoming the richest nation in the world. Numbers will be inflated to cooperate. Definitions of wealth will be revised. If the wallet is empty but the chest is swollen with pride, who needs currency.
And if western media attempts to point out that our common man is poorer, we will block them. Statistics and data unseen is poverty solved.
Journalists will be intimidated gently at first, firmly later. Those who comply will be rewarded with front row access and carefully prepared questions. News will be printed of course. Endless news. But news that sounds suspiciously like party pamphlets.
Repetition of lies will take care of credibility.
Our leader will walk into international meetings and guffaw loudly. Very loudly. Whether anyone understands is irrelevant.
The laughter will be captured, edited, looped, and fed back home as evidence of global admiration. Foreign leaders may look puzzled, but our army of anchors also gathered here in the capital will explain that confusion is respect in other cultures.
We will lose tariff wars and call them strategic retreats.
We will sign agreements that hurt us and announce historic victories.
Awards from tiny countries will be waved as if the leader is winning the Nobel prize.
Anyone asking for details will be accused of disloyalty.
Most importantly, we take an oath to keep the people busy with religious outrage. Busy with imagined conversion threats. Busy guarding their daughters from imaginary treacherous suitors.
A distracted nation is a manageable nation.
Hunger can wait. Unemployment can wait. Anger cannot.
And finally, as the oath concludes, someone looks out at the fog covering Delhi. Thick. Grey. Suffocating.
It feels appropriate.
Not just pollution, but policy. Not just smog, but strategy.
The oath is complete. Applause follows. And as the fake fog of falsehood settles over the nation once again, truth is the victim, as it has been the last ten years..!