INDIAN POLITICS AND ITS KEEPERS

The tectonic shift in Indian politics that we have all come to witness will be  analysed, dissected, discussed and absorbed for days, months and possibly years to come. Indian democracy is a very organic thing. It grows, it mutates, it adapts, it evolves in ways that often appear too chaotic to comprehend. Was it the Gandhis that failed the Congress? Was it the corruption of UPA? Was it the charisma of Narendra Modi? Was it the brilliant BJP campaign? Was it the media that engineered a Modi wave? Did Modi manage to break down the seemingly insurmountable social barriers of caste, community and region to create a political juggernaut unlike any other witnessed by this largely young nation? Perhaps it’s all of this and many things more. It is hard to judge why some dreams sell and others get lampooned. In fact, one could argue that people didn’t buy into the dream of a Modi Sarkar as much as they opted out of the UPA nightmare. A conspicuous failing of the Congress campaign was that it had nothing to offer to the people. Whatever be the merits of the Gujarat model, Modi served it on a gold platter to the people, maybe even shoved it down their throats. He made the people believe that he could usher in “the good days”, and people bought into his promise for one simple yet important reason. They saw very clearly that he believed in the dream that he was selling. The Congress, on the other hand, completely lacked this self-belief.

There is one crucial facet of the Modi campaign that may well redefine Indian politics in the coming years. After a long time – in fact this may be the first time that the (celebrated) young Indian voter has witnessed such a thing – a national party actually fought an election with a ruthless intention of  winning majority in the Lok Sabha on its own. Coalition had become a dirty synonym for the complacent attitude of both the Congress and BJP in the last decade. It is true that Indian polity had genuinely fractured and disintegrated in the 90s. But in recent years the two main national parties seemed more intent on engineering coalitions than winning decisive mandates. And there is something very damaging in this attitude. There is no reason why the Congress and the BJP should not spend their entire political energy on winning over the whole of India. The rise of the regional parties may very well be a sign of the deepening of Indian democracy but the fact that the Congress has politically surrendered in large pockets of the country is inexcusable. If they had fought hard and lost in Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, it would still mean something. But the Congress party in these states,and  many others, has long surrendered to regional powers. What’s more, if Congress does manage to pull off a surprise once in a while (as in the case of Uttar Pradesh in 2009), they don’t even bother to revitalize the grass roots by giving the local cadre any credit, but rather ascribe the success to the appeal of “the family”. The modern day Congress seems to have taken the attitude of letting the regional parties do all the grinding work. Much of the development that India needs would have to be delivered by the economically backward states.

The BJP for its part can claim some success in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and partly in Bihar. But in all of these troubled parts, people have given up on the Congress  (or rather the Congress has given up on itself). It seems like the Congress leadership wants no part of the sweaty, dirty work that is required there. Rather they would like to have a remote control to run the country from Delhi, something which coalition engineering can deliver. This attitude was clearly reflected in the Telangana debacle. It  was sickening to see that one of the first things that followed the announcement of the creation of Telangana was a public reminder from the Congress to the TRS of their merger promise.

The landslide victory of the BJP, albeit surprising in its scale, was hard won. The Modi campaign had a breathtaking intensity, again something which the young Indians have only heard in stories told about Nehru and Indira Gandhi but have not witnessed first hand in the efforts of the current Gandhi crop. This was visibly a campaign designed to win national approval, not just a campaign to be the single largest party in Lok Sabha. And this is precisely why the decision of AAP to go national must be judged through a fresh perspective. AAP was never going to win big, but they fought strong and hard, and people have seen it. Yogendra Yadav often quotes Kanshi Ram – “Pehla chunav harne ke liye”. The first defeat is meant for people to witness not how strong you are, but rather how hard you can fight even when you aren’t strong enough. It defines your character, it defines your core following. Victories come later and are built on gradual increments to this base. By launching itself on the national stage, AAP has set the context for its very existence. It has conveyed its intent to be a national player in times to come. Some say that AAP may eventually replace the Congress as the true opposition to BJP. If it does, it would not be for ideological reasons alone. It would happen because the Congress leadership was too lazy or listless to get its act together.