Yes..... I did vote for the Congress in 2009 but if the truth be told, I voted not for the Congress but for Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, had it been 2004, I would have still done the same ..... but had it been 1999, I would have voted firmly for Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his team ..... so, if you look closely, I have never voted for the party, but for the personality which is an anachronism, considering that we live in a parliamentary democracy and not a presidential one ... And I am not alone, a large number of people in this great country do the same - others of course vote on religious and castiest considerations....
The reason behind this anachronism is very simple.... there is nothing on paper and manifesto that differentiates the two largest parties in the country! On the face of it, both the Congress and the BJP are complete opposites of each other - the first, a symbol of minority appeasement in the form of secularism, the other reactionary to the principles of secularism.... the first, an unabashed speaker of crony populism, the second, a party close to the moneyed ..... but if you scratch beyond the surface, the one thing that strikes you is this simple fact, that beyond all the external posturing, all the blatant attempts at vote-bank engineering, both the right and the left-of-centre are one and the same.... Whether it's issues of foreign policy, whether it's issues of corporate and social paradigms, both the parties speak in the same language - the words used or phrases coined maybe different but the reality remains that the message is the same ..... Indeed, if the manifestos of the two parties could be exchanged and written on a simple parchment, minus the ideological posturing of Aam Aadmi or Ram Janambhoomi, the chances would be that none would be a bit wiser of which manifesto stands for which party - so alike are they in thought or deed!
This is a sad point of reference - for the BJP at one time had a chance to be something different - they had a different agenda, they had a different focus, they had a different point of engagement - people would argue that their religious agenda had no place in a secular country like India ... that may be true but a Conservative space was there's for the taking..... this would have helped the country in many ways - the birth of a true Conservative Party would have pushed the dominant Congress to the Centre more strongly or even made a Liberal Party of it ... thus giving ample choices to the populace at large.... The failure of BJP to hold on to that space and it's continuous efforts to define it's position in religious terms led to the great failure of the 1990s. Today, the competition is not between two different strands of thought, but between two different hues of the same strand - it's either hawk or kite .... hard or soft ..... but increasingly the same!
The only party that seems to have a different opinion is the Communist bloc parties but these parties have not stopped living in the heydays of the 1970s. How can a citizen of 2010 vote for parties, that though different, still are averse to change or even to keep in single step with the changing times? The Land reform policies, the Social Security Act may have a large Communist footprint to the text but the fact remains that the Left has failed the nation by not watching it's step and in the process has marginalized it's own existence in the country. So, what could have been a credible force of opposition has failed the right to enter the hallowed portals of the Parliament itself!
The less said about the regional and casteist and communal parties the better ..... the joke of India is that today we have more than 500 parties but not a single party that can be considered as an alternative. Interestingly, while the populace of India has increased and the pressures of governance become more and more crucial, the political space has shrunk and this is not a good sign for the future.....
Man lives on Hope and Hope is all I have with me today.....
Wo Subaah Kabhi To Aayegi ..... Wo Subaah Kabhi To Aayegi
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