National Parties for a Strong India
After the UP polls there is a larger question that should haunt us then the so-called miracle pulled by Mayawati. Why are the congress and bjp looking like desperate losers in front of pragmatic regional players? Is it the right trend for the country?
When President Kalam said that two party system was needed to maintain stability as well as strong centre, he was not speaking something from nowhere. There is a concern that if one party rule of four decades was painful for the country then several party rule with all having equal powers is also a recipe for disaster. Like it always happens, the people who got offended most are the ones who think all others are still not 'enlightened' enough to appreciate the revelations of Prophet Marx. Hence a two party system that keeps the ideology of congress and bjp at centre would ignore the most "progressive" of all.
Although in my view the congress today is the kind of rot which should be thrown into the dustbins of history, I am ready to trade a congress driven rule to any of the regional parties driven rule any day. It is better to let the oldest party to have some feast than to invite the whims and fancies of regional vultures all ready to have their 'pound of flesh' irrespective of what is happening to the nation as whole.
In short the BSPs, RJDs,TDPs,AIADMKs etc etc etc cannot see the India beyond their Bihar, UP, Andhra, Tamil Nadu etc etc. Neither they have a national presence nor they have intended to have any national policy. It is their region that matters most like in case of TDPs and AIADMKs or their caste-religious combinations that matters - like Lalu's Muslim-Yadav and Mayawati's Dalit-Muslim with the twice born as one time aberration. In other words they have been the beneficiaries of divisive politics of India and why would they ever like to end those divisions when they are feeding on it. So to end caste differences they do caste politics. Why would they ever want casteism to end? Ditto for communists. They don't want poverty to end as their whole politics revolves around using the poor.
The congress and the bjp should mend their ways, introspect and become stronger from here. That is the only way out. Then there will be two groups at centre - NDA and UPA which would do the job of two party system for the time being. Congress and BJP apart from being national party are also different in ideology. So people have an option to support what they like. Also, their views converge on majority of the issues that concern economy, defence and foreign affairs, which is also desirable in the present context. So in a Lok Sabha election UPA and NDA should be two groups with Congress and BJP as the dominant parties. That also means that congress and bjp should together take around 350 seats. For 2009 it looks like an almost impossible task as of now. A mandate like 2004 is very confusing. The party that rules and the party that opposes have a difference of 7 seats!! The sum of congress+bjp seats is not even 300. Thus we can see the power that resides with the ruling party seems to be far less than a party with less than half the seats of Congress. If the ruling party has to be strong then it should take 170-190 seats. Otherwise it’s a waste of another 5 years.
What is more worrisome is that both the national parties are definitely going to shrink in 2009. Their losing in the Hindi heartland is a big blow. If they both have 100 seats each then it adds to only 200. This also means that UNPA with all its regional parties could be in majority - of course CPM and RJDs will drift. How can they support an anti-people government?? Since Communists are the only representatives of people they would join UNPA. Here they along with BSP would have the biggest say. If that is the case then Mayawati may be the Prime Minister with Laloo as Home Minister ,Mulayam as defence minister and Karat as China Minister. And finance ministry will be a horror story irrespective of the person in charge. Those who think that Mulayam and Mayawati cannot be in same ministry may like to think twice - Laloo and Paswan are in the same ministry at present. The coalition would then be conglomeration of interests of various regions, various castes but never of India.
When the redoubtable head of RSS - "guru" M S Golwalkar was informed that the congress has split involving Indira Gandhi and Syndicate he immediately condemned the weakening of congress internally. Although always opposed to congress, he saw in the weakening of a national party - weakening of the nation itself.
The only way congress can emerge stronger is by appreciating the fact that there were other leaders in Congress who were as good as and even better than Nehru. So it is the family that needs congress and not the other way round. For the 5 years under Narasimha Rao - when it distanced itself from the 'family', congress made many bold and revolutionary decisions for which many think that he was the best Prime Minister India ever had. It is sad that the party that can boast of people like Sardar Patel, C Rajagopalachari, G B Pant, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Lal Bahadur Shashtri and so many others is compelled to rise and fall with the destiny of one family.
BJP needs to see to it that it does not congressify itself. A party that defines itself by its ideology has an extra burden of integrity. Along with other things bjp had emerged as a 'party with difference'. However, from what has happened in last three years it has become a party with a lot of differences. Thankfully the Uma Bharti episode seems to be over (ghosts would come back soon in MP elections) and people are beginning to forget the adventures of Advani with Jinnah episode. A person who has re-written the rules of Indian politics can be spared one ideological error. Unlike congress - BJP has good mass leaders in Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj who are just waiting for their innings at centre. Narendra Modi is an excellent administrator and brilliant at implementing economic reforms as the success of Gujarat has shown. He is a Prime Minister material.
Thus it is not extra-terrestrial to assume that these two national parties would rejuvenate themselves and become stronger. It is only in the interest of the nation.
When President Kalam said that two party system was needed to maintain stability as well as strong centre, he was not speaking something from nowhere. There is a concern that if one party rule of four decades was painful for the country then several party rule with all having equal powers is also a recipe for disaster. Like it always happens, the people who got offended most are the ones who think all others are still not 'enlightened' enough to appreciate the revelations of Prophet Marx. Hence a two party system that keeps the ideology of congress and bjp at centre would ignore the most "progressive" of all.
Although in my view the congress today is the kind of rot which should be thrown into the dustbins of history, I am ready to trade a congress driven rule to any of the regional parties driven rule any day. It is better to let the oldest party to have some feast than to invite the whims and fancies of regional vultures all ready to have their 'pound of flesh' irrespective of what is happening to the nation as whole.
In short the BSPs, RJDs,TDPs,AIADMKs etc etc etc cannot see the India beyond their Bihar, UP, Andhra, Tamil Nadu etc etc. Neither they have a national presence nor they have intended to have any national policy. It is their region that matters most like in case of TDPs and AIADMKs or their caste-religious combinations that matters - like Lalu's Muslim-Yadav and Mayawati's Dalit-Muslim with the twice born as one time aberration. In other words they have been the beneficiaries of divisive politics of India and why would they ever like to end those divisions when they are feeding on it. So to end caste differences they do caste politics. Why would they ever want casteism to end? Ditto for communists. They don't want poverty to end as their whole politics revolves around using the poor.
The congress and the bjp should mend their ways, introspect and become stronger from here. That is the only way out. Then there will be two groups at centre - NDA and UPA which would do the job of two party system for the time being. Congress and BJP apart from being national party are also different in ideology. So people have an option to support what they like. Also, their views converge on majority of the issues that concern economy, defence and foreign affairs, which is also desirable in the present context. So in a Lok Sabha election UPA and NDA should be two groups with Congress and BJP as the dominant parties. That also means that congress and bjp should together take around 350 seats. For 2009 it looks like an almost impossible task as of now. A mandate like 2004 is very confusing. The party that rules and the party that opposes have a difference of 7 seats!! The sum of congress+bjp seats is not even 300. Thus we can see the power that resides with the ruling party seems to be far less than a party with less than half the seats of Congress. If the ruling party has to be strong then it should take 170-190 seats. Otherwise it’s a waste of another 5 years.
What is more worrisome is that both the national parties are definitely going to shrink in 2009. Their losing in the Hindi heartland is a big blow. If they both have 100 seats each then it adds to only 200. This also means that UNPA with all its regional parties could be in majority - of course CPM and RJDs will drift. How can they support an anti-people government?? Since Communists are the only representatives of people they would join UNPA. Here they along with BSP would have the biggest say. If that is the case then Mayawati may be the Prime Minister with Laloo as Home Minister ,Mulayam as defence minister and Karat as China Minister. And finance ministry will be a horror story irrespective of the person in charge. Those who think that Mulayam and Mayawati cannot be in same ministry may like to think twice - Laloo and Paswan are in the same ministry at present. The coalition would then be conglomeration of interests of various regions, various castes but never of India.
When the redoubtable head of RSS - "guru" M S Golwalkar was informed that the congress has split involving Indira Gandhi and Syndicate he immediately condemned the weakening of congress internally. Although always opposed to congress, he saw in the weakening of a national party - weakening of the nation itself.
The only way congress can emerge stronger is by appreciating the fact that there were other leaders in Congress who were as good as and even better than Nehru. So it is the family that needs congress and not the other way round. For the 5 years under Narasimha Rao - when it distanced itself from the 'family', congress made many bold and revolutionary decisions for which many think that he was the best Prime Minister India ever had. It is sad that the party that can boast of people like Sardar Patel, C Rajagopalachari, G B Pant, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Lal Bahadur Shashtri and so many others is compelled to rise and fall with the destiny of one family.
BJP needs to see to it that it does not congressify itself. A party that defines itself by its ideology has an extra burden of integrity. Along with other things bjp had emerged as a 'party with difference'. However, from what has happened in last three years it has become a party with a lot of differences. Thankfully the Uma Bharti episode seems to be over (ghosts would come back soon in MP elections) and people are beginning to forget the adventures of Advani with Jinnah episode. A person who has re-written the rules of Indian politics can be spared one ideological error. Unlike congress - BJP has good mass leaders in Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj who are just waiting for their innings at centre. Narendra Modi is an excellent administrator and brilliant at implementing economic reforms as the success of Gujarat has shown. He is a Prime Minister material.
Thus it is not extra-terrestrial to assume that these two national parties would rejuvenate themselves and become stronger. It is only in the interest of the nation.
posted by Gaurav Kumar Ambasta @ 12:22 AM
7 Comments:
As I read more and more of newspaper prints debating on the merits (or demerits) of a 2 party system, I couldn't but more merrily agree with you in this matter - even though I have my own "unrealistic" agendas.
A 2 party system is definitely in the best interest of the country as a whole (mostly detrimental to all the so called regional or national hooligans)and in a functioning democracy it is often mandatory to have minimum amount of democratic choices that people could exercise. This, in the long run, benefits only them.
But, but and but.. I see a small difficulty in acheiving that goal. Irrespective of the fact that in my view, both UPA and NDA are nothing but a conglomerate of rubbish ideas, it is the people in the end who have to decide their representative. Right? And there lies the biggest issue. I can understand that an illiterate UP muslim or bihari yadav could vote for Lalu or mulayam, but what about the so called progressive states? I can name atleast 6-7 states where none of the national parties are stong enough to fight the local ones. Hence, the aspirations of the people (and to everybody's horror, these aspirations tantamount to divide India on any basis)could only be reflected by the regional parties. No matter whatever policy a congress or a BJP takes, it could never match a DMK in TN or TDP in AP.
There is no point in cursing congress about always falling in line with a particular family regime because at the end of it all, if citizens (remember my comment - half a billion illiterates and equal no of educated lampons ?) vote for dynasty then every other thing becomes secondary.
In a democracy only vote matters. Unless you have citizens who are careful enough about their own country no democratic system could prosper and as I have always said, a faulty democracy is much more dangerous than any other regime.
The problem starts and ends with people of India. Only they are to be blamed for their fate. If they prefer a prosperous TN over a magnificinet India then they have to cope with the dacoits and thievs. Every Indian state believes that prosperity of any other state could only be at their expense and hence exclusivity is a must. Inclusive politics at the regional level, and that too across boundaries is a far fetched idea.
You cannot have the cake and eat it too.
Hence, no matter how much mouth watering your idea might sound, in Indian parliamentary democracy we would always have the influx of the Lalus, Mulayams and Mayawatis or Jaylalithas.
If we can cure ourselves then only we could think of curing the nation - both politically and socially.
P.S. Never did I mention that indian comunists have the guts or knowledge enough to rule this vast land. Their adulterated ideas are more dangerous than their Chinese counterparts. They want democratic corruption combined with communist powers.
If only they would have been true to their ideology, I would have been happier. Alas !! I am after a mirage. [:)]
Narendra Modi as PM ? Thank you! But considering we have a murder conspirator as a President-in-waiting it would not be too much of a surprise to see a similar sort in the PM's office. Then, the water would reach 10 feet !!
As an administrator Modi is great. Too brilliant. A cabinet ministry which requires solid implementation could be an answer.
Apart from that, this is one post which I fully agree with.
@ Stambhit
There is no denying that the people would decide. But it is the national parties which should come to power.. with a decisive mandate to bjp or congress. Then around them NDA and UPA can be formed.. Thus we can get best of both worlds.
But if the regional parties get stronger - I fear a stronger BSP in 2009 - then it'll become a game of competitive snatch-loot of resources.
"If only they would have been true to their ideology, I would have been happier"
We have discussed this threadbare..
We'll do it again !!
@ Spiderman
I agree there is an image problem with Narendra Modi. Much to the displeasure of our secular coloumnists, he has done a remarkable job in Gujarat.
I would still hold the view that he should come to the national arena. If his current performance is anything to go by, he'll probably make a very good PM.
I guess You didn't get the root of what I was asking for. For any party in a parliamentary democracy to come to power, it needs people's mandate, unless obviously you are in our neibourghing country.
But my contention was,in Tn,Maha or AP who would vote for BJP or congress in place of the regional parties?
These days, the largest number of hits in any blog is in CNN IBN for Anuradha Sengupta. Read it. You will guess the deep rooted provincialism I am talking about.
As far as lefts are concerned, we could easily leave them as they are of little concern in India. We could easily model chinese implementation policy if not their political background.
That atleast, would help India to grow faster.
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@ Stam
that is the concern... regional issues should not override national ones...
but u mentioned - Tn,Maha or AP
Here Maha and AP already have a congress govt.
Biggest concern is UP. She is one person who'll dictate 2009 political formulations !!
Nahi maniyega aap log... samajh rahe hain.
:)
Ya, i'm back
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