INDIA GETTING READY FOR GENERAL ELECTIONS

Our nation is inching towards General Elections or General Elections are inching towards us. Both are same. The enthusiasm and curiosity are gaining momentum with the passage of each day. The heartbeats of political leaders are increasing day by day. They are deeply in pursuit of forming alliances to capture power at the centre and those who are not expecting the Supreme authority at the centre are on the look out for becoming part of winnable alliances, with the hope of capturing as many seats as possible - most of them are regional parties - are keeping an hidden agenda of bargaining for power after the elections and thus becoming part of power at the centre. The days of single party rule are immaterial and impossible in contemporary India and the regional parties are sure of a coalition government whoever may be the occupant of the throne at Indrapastha. With the growth of regional parties and thereby three National parties are now occupying a backseat. These are not the days of PanditJi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi. The fondness with which they nurtured the party and their personal magnetism are rare in our political scene now and moreover the Prime Ministerial aspirants are mounting even among the regional party leaders. While PanditJi was in the saddle for years, a question mark looming large before the eyes of the Indians were after Nehru- Who? They couldn’t figure another VIP occupying the chair of Jawahar Lal Nehru. Now the situation is entirely different. Even Mulyam Singh, his deputy, Kumari Mayawati, Jayalalitha, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Sharad Pawar, most of them parochial are interested in keeping high hopes of becoming PM. As far as a Bihari leader is concerned, India means Bihar. For another regional party leader from TamilNadu, TamilNadu is the whole India, and for the one, two or three ,UP is India. These VVIPs are unable to or are not willing to visualize an India comprising the States and Union Territories are also parts of India, ie Bharat. Parochialism, sons of the soil mentality and secessionism are pulling India backwards to the princely States of an old era.

As an high court Judge pointed out the other day, let me quote his words- “Those who touch a sword should not think that they are oracles”. But in our country such a belief has gaining ground.

“World’s Greatest Democracy” has already conducted the Presidential Election in November and an African-American gentleman, Barack Obama is poised to enter the Oval Office on January 20. At a time when the Greatest Democracy is in throes of a severe economic recession, engaged in two wars- Iraq and Afghanistan, job cuts in millions, Wall Street in a mess, Obama has started listening to “music”. The whole World was watching with bated breath for the last one or two years as to who might be their next President keeping their fingers crossed. Obama’s predecessor, now he is lame-duck, with an authoritarian streak, made a mess of American economy by clutching to the Free Market Economy, and unnecessarily getting involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending billions of dollars, massacring millions of innocent civilians, literally wiping out those countries’ valuable cultural monuments, still without repentance going on with their destructive activities. The people of USA were fed up with the eight year rule of an arrogant President landing the nation in shambles particularly the economic collapse-his popularity rating was at its lowest level still remaining unrepentant.
Now after the election in USA, the whole World is in the process of turning attention to the General Election in the “World’s Largest Democracy” ie India.

New political equations have started emerging. Ticket mongers are frantically running after the leaders, even willing to pay ‘bribery’ to the tune of crores ( that they can make up in no time, their political chicanery that much laudable and are adept masters in making each move in the political chess board), sycophants have already appeared in the corridors of power and infront of 10 Janpath, even willing to bow down and crawl before the High Command and always available at the beck and call of higher authorities willing to obey “his master’s voice”.

Fence-sitters are biding their time, pondering over which way the wind blows, they are adept in this game of throwing to the wind political and moral values, and ethics.

The worst example, we saw on the occasion of confidence motion( trust vote) tabled in the LokSabha and the horse-trading conducted with maximum precision. For example, the Samajwadi Party’s volte-face at the last moment, until then one of the staunch opponents of Civilian Nuclear deal and ditched the third-front-actually it was a hotch-potch alliance-, that is another matter and thus made ManMohanSingh, the happiest man.

Then the ruling leaders turned to Shibu Soren and his cohorts enticed them and bought their support reported to have extended to him and his men, all they demanded, thus forcing their MPs talking with much vigour the positive aspects of Civilian Nuclear Deal and finally voted in favour of the Government. If the Government was not willing to oblige what they demanded, with the same tongue they could have spoken against the deal, without any compunction. It all depends…

Samajwadi Party’s charismatic and manipulative leader is reported to be flexing his muscles to extract the pound of flesh for all the help rendered on the occasion of tabling the confidence motion and subsequent voting to ensure the survival of ManMohanSingh’s Government. Now the gentleman is said to have threatened to walk out of the UPA and has given five days’ time to take action against Pakistan, otherwise be prepared to face the worst- the withdrawal of support. The seat-sharing talks in UP(Uttar Pradesh) is in doldrums, UP, once the citadel of Congress is in the hands of regional parties like BSP and SP even BJP is facing the heat, a State about which Atal Bihari Vajpayee once said- the route to Delhi is through UP.

Now Congress and BJP have found themselves in the same boat in the affairs of UP.

BJP had already begun preparations for the General Elections very much earlier than other parties and they had the confidence of riding the crest of popular wave and wrest back the throne at Delhi. Even the Prime Ministerial candidate had already been named, he is none other than L.K.Advani. Their confidence has already evaporated after the recent bye-elections in Rajasthan, Delhi, MadhyaPradesh, Chattigarh and Mizoram. A dream of clean sweep in the elections has disappeared and find themselves in predicament. The frequent terror attacks and latest carnage in Mumbai and the Government’s failure to detect the terrorist plan might turn masses to their side and clean sweep was expected. That didn’t materialized. In the meanwhile another shock in the form of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat , the former Vice President, respected by leaders across political spectrum has already plunged in to the electoral arena, much to the chagrin of PM aspirant L.K.Advani and other leaders like the Party President Rajnath Singh. In the matter of power play, both Congress and BJP are in a precarious situation.

Even the Left Front is facing a dilemma like the other two bourgeois Parties. In West Bengal, the citadel of CPI(M), in the bye-election conducted in Nandigram, the Trinamoool Congress candidate has wrested victory from the leftist candidate with a wide margin of more than 39000 votes. It was an unexpected defeat, such was the confidence of Left Front of Bengal. And for Trinamool Congress and its leader Mamta Banerjee, this victory has emerged as a morale booster.

Kerala is going to be another head-ache of LDF. Besides the anti-incumbancy factor, the infighting still raging in the CPI(M) which is the major ruling Party and sky-high prices of essential commodities and the wranglings in the coalition for seats to contest to the Parliament are the gigantic problems still remain to be attended.

A nation enmeshed in terror attacks, communal clashes, rampant corruption, splinter parties without any ideology to present before the masses, poverty, mal-nutrition, illiteracy, parochialism and secessionism affecting the election exercises, gives not much hope to the people at large.