Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Coalition Dharma - Great Indian Politics

India: The home to politics of weird alliances, ambiguous manifestos and bizarre rationality

There are still lots of questions that do not have answers in Indian Politics. I wish I get them answered.
First of all, I would like Sonia, Lalu, Mulayam, Paswan, and all the Lefties to revisit their coalition theory.
I never knew that a party proclaimed of supporting the upper class community becomes communal but aligning and vote banking on specific jaaths is secular. Brahmins are communal but Yadhavs or Jhaats are secular. Hinduthva is communal but INML is secular.

There has never been a speech given about the growth and prosperity of the region. Their only motto for these `budbuk` people/parties is to make sure NDA doesn’t come to power, and to provide a secular government. This Pseudo-secularity can be attained even at the cost of development. If DMK is part of NDA, it’s because NDA is democratic, and if is out of NDA, it’s because NDA is communal. Did it take them four and half year to find that out?

No where else can we see a government with heterogeneous composition of people from capitalist, socialist and communist beliefs, all trying to influence the government with their own ideals, and the coalition dharma satisfies everyone resulting in a pull from different directions with net displacement as zero.

I truly wonder if this full-blown democracy is more a bane than a boon. In the pretext of democracy some malicious forces are destroying it's sanctity. The whole system of electing individual representatives to the assembly and they deciding our leaders creates a vacuum in the ruling system. We have no access to choose the decision makers of this country. How else can Mulayam Singh become the Defense Minister of India? Considering the case of 2005 Bihar elections, the NDA won 91 seats, the RJD 78, Paswan’s LJP won only 28 seats, while the Congress, Lefties, smaller parties and Independents shared the rest. With No clear majority, the NDA now ascertains that it is ready to support Paswan from outside (Source NDTV 24X7). That means the Chief Minister of Bihar is a person who could only salvage a merger 28 seats of the 243 strong assembly! i.e Even if 88% of the people don’t want him, he’s still in.
This is not new, For the United Front Government, with more parties that the members knew counting, the PMs were Deva Gouda and I.K Gujlal. I would be surprised if at least 10% of Indians knew both these people before that. Will the Nation survive with this kind of democracy?

If we thought this was crazy, there is something more ridiculous waiting to be discussed. The one man army. Democracy here is redefined as “of the person, by the person and for the person (and his family)”. People know only him, vote for only him and in worst case accuse only him. TN’s Amma is such a one (wo)man army. The only one who can tell at least 2 of her MLAs or ministers is her PA. The same goes with all the bigwigs like Lalu, OmPrakash Chautala, Farroq Abdullah etc. These people are mortals and one day may die, but their influence still stands high. We still know parties begging for votes in Rajiv Gandhi’s, Kamaraj’s name and people still voting for MGR and NTR.

If some are fully baked, and some are still raw, there will be some who are half baked. This is a situation where Independents stand for elections with high aspirations of changing the way things presently look. The election results when announced, either a big party gets overwhelming majority and these Independents become speechless, or when there is a hung assembly, these Independents are bought for a huge ransom, in which case they loose even their identity. End of the fifth year he’s forgotten.

In all these scenarios the only thing common is the money and muscle power that is heavily invested by our representatives to get through to the position they are currently in.

Now, back to the point we stared from, is this full fledged democracy a boon or a bane. Given a chance, I would prefer the US form of elections where the candidates who run for president-ship is made to earn it. People vote for him not his puppets. And the presidential debate is by far the best way to find out the potency of our leaders.

If only Dr. Ambadekar was alive today…

No comments: