THE INDIAN POLITICAL LEAGUE

One of my friends on Orkut during this Lok Sabha elections once scrapped me, asking as to why I didn’t write anything about the Election Predictions on my blog. I joked with him saying that if I start dabbling on election predictions, what would Prof.Yogendra Yadav (for the uninitiated, he is today, the country’s leading psephologist. He along with Prof.Rajiv Karandikar was associated with CNN-IBN’s poll projections. Currently he is a Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies {CSDS} in New Delhi) do? I didn’t want to give him a run for his money (an example you might think of my bad sense of humor!), because I grew up watching him and Dr.Prannoy Roy bring Indian elections to our drawing rooms!

Indian elections have always attracted a huge audience and with the entry of the satellite television and now the internet, together with the mushrooming growth of the private news channels, its viewership has but increased. That I think is but natural. Afterall, India is the largest democracy in the world. India incidentally, also has the largest number of political parties fighting elections. Consider for example, the sheer excitement we witnessed among the Indians, when the oldest democracy was about to elect its Chief Executive. Back home when India votes to elect its own leader, the excitement has to be even more spectacular. Our Indian Political League (IPL) has the ability to give a strong competition to the other IPL (Indian Premier League) in terms of the viewership , the drama and the climaxes and the anti-climaxes! I know the likes of Sachin, Ganguly, Sehwag and Yuvraj are icons in India, but the likes of Mayawati, Lalu Prasad, Karunanidhi or for that matter Amar Singh, have a better ability than these cricketers to deliver a bouncer every now and then!!

So what were the political highpoints of this election? I know I would be opening a pandorra’s box in starting this debate, but I think a healthy, constructive and an open debate is the hallmark of a mature democracy. If this election was about the ‘Youth wave’, then I think it is for the youth like us to voice our opinion and engage in a healthy debate. According to senior journalists like Dilip Padgaonkar (former Editor of the ToI), this election marks the beginning of ‘post-Mandal politics’ in India. He gives the example from states like Bihar, where Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) could sweep the elections riding on the agenda of development and not on the issues of caste or community. Bihar has always been known for playing the ‘identity politics’ card to success in every election, and parties like the RJD and LJP have exploited the cast equation to its notorious best. So what explains their fall from glory? Take the example of Uttar Pradesh, another state where identity politics influenced election results. The ruling BSP of Mayawati (said to be the spokesperson of the Dalit voice in India) surprisingly, emerged as the third largest party in the state in the Lok Sabha election.

The drubbing that the BJP got in this election shows that both the urban and the rural voters have not responded favorably to the rudderless ship called the NDA. Thanks to the vitriolic hate campaign preached by Varun Gandhi and Narendra Modi, and incidences in Kandhamal in Orissa, the Indian voters could sense the communal tenor in their political agenda. How could a ‘decisive leader’ who dreamt of giving a ‘determined govt’ make such a grave blunder in missing the pulse of the Indian voter??? Blogging like Obama or advertising using the internet can never make you a PM Mr.Advani. Indian voters are more matured than the US voters. We need concrete issues to judge the merit of a party and a leader. Attacking Dr. Manmohan Singh, on being a weak PM, did not strike a chord with the voters. There were other issues which the BJP failed to project as issues of national importance-that of national security, layoffs et al. In states like Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP did not play its communal card and harped upon the issues of development ,it fared better. The strange paradox is that Narendra Modi in Gujarat talks about development to ride home to victory, but outside Gujarat its something else.

The routing of the Left parties show that the Left leaders in India need to revise their old lessons of the ‘Das Kapital’ and the ‘Communist Manifesto’ all afresh. Communism in India has lost touch with its target constituency-the dispossessed and the downtrodden. Championing the rights of the poor should not be a rhetoric only,but should be followed in letter and spirit. A loss in its traditional bastion in states like Kerala and Bengal calls for greater introspection for the left. You cannot talk of Communism ,sitting in an air conditioned room in Delhi and turn a blind eye when Singur and Nandigram was burning.

For me the highpoint of this election was that, it marked a sharp break from the post-1989 election phase in India, in that this election was no longer about Mandir or Mandal, but it was about brand Manmohan. The Congress managed an overall tally of 205 seats alone, which is unprecedented, given the fragmented nature of the election verdict in the recent past.For me it was a vote for stability,a positve vote for the schemes that the previous UPA govt launched (NREGA, JNNURM, RTI, Tribal Rights Act, Domestic Violence Act, National Rural Health Mission, Loan waiver for the farmers etc).It was a vote for the clean image of our PM who was above divisive politics and stood for inclusive growth and an agenda of reforms with a human face. If Atal Bihari Vajpayee made the BJP acceptable to even the non-BJP supporters, Dr.Singh has made the Congress acceptable to the non-Congress brigade. I once had a very interesting discussion with a friend of mine about Plato and his concept of the ‘Philosopher-Kings’. For those who are not aware of this concept, let me be brief in puttng it to you, Plato said that those with virtue and knowledge should only be allowed to rule, because they then would be above politics and would rule the state well in the interest of all. So now I think, we have finally found our Philosopher King…