WSN colum­nist Prab­h­dial Singh Saini opines that In­dian vot­ers are eas­ily in­flu­enced by crooked, self­ish and power-hun­gry po­lit­i­cal par­ties and lead­ers of all shades. Pop­ulist slo­gans have been the sta­ple diet of par­ties with­out de­liv­er­ance of any kind since 1947. It was no dif­fer­ent in 2019. 

How many times af­ter elec­tions we sit back and think -have we been fooled? We are think­ing even to­day while we wait for the 2019 gen­eral elec­tion re­sults on 23 May and are lap­ping in the huge lies of In­di­a’s exit polls. This time things have be­come more com­pounded be­cause of the ut­terly bi­ased and stu­pid re­port­ing of the satel­lite TV chan­nels.

Af­ter trans­fer of power from the British in 1947, the Con­gress played pol­i­tics with its so­cial­ist mask and slo­gan of “Garibi Hatao”.  Rahul Gandhi has now promised Rs. 6000 per fam­ily to the poor­est of the poor. Clearly, the ‘Garibi Hatao’ still con­tin­ues.

On the other side of the spec­trum, the right-wing Rashtriya Swayam Se­wak Sangh -the RSS con­tin­ues its one-na­tion agenda where the Hindu and among the Hin­dus, the Brah­min dom­i­nates and oth­ers are only ap­pendages. From time to time, the Con­gress party nur­tured, sup­ported, some­times banned the body but largely con­tin­ued its hon­ey­moon with the RSS.  It is only now with the BJP in power that the Con­gress is show­ing stiff op­po­si­tion to the RSS.

Those from the left and mid­dle-of-the-road, who con­sider them­selves to be a likely chal­lenge ei­ther to the Con­gress or the RSS or both have not been able to catch the bull by its horns. Their dilly-dal­ly­ing and as­so­ci­a­tion with ei­ther of the two was long over but they have failed to evolve a work­able third al­ter­na­tive of a con­glom­er­a­tion of par­ties or a third party. The AAP ex­per­i­ment is largely lim­ited only to Delhi.

It is ironic that de­spite the 1977 Janata Party suc­cess, In­dia has not come up with a third party at the coun­try level and re­gional par­ties have failed to put up a per­pet­ual joint front.

Since 2014, the RSS and its vast net­work with the Bhar­tiya Janata Party at the high­est pedestal are giv­ing the Con­gress party the run for its money.  The Con­gress love-hate re­la­tion­ship with the RSS is now rock­ing the boat of the Con­gress. It is now not easy to rid In­dia of the bloody jaws of RSS, which is well or­ga­nized, united and has stead­fastly stuck to its di­vi­sive ide­ol­ogy since 1925.  The highly dis­ci­plined ul­tra-na­tion­al­ists are here to stay and this Franken­stein mon­ster is in­flu­enc­ing In­dia to dis­miss all other ide­olo­gies with its fo­cus, style and man­age­ment skills.

Is In­dia re­ally fit for democ­racy? Is the West­min­ster model suit­able for In­dia?
Could In­dia not have con­sid­ered some other pro­por­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tive model which would be a true fed­eral struc­ture?

The num­ber count is al­ways detri­men­tal to mi­nori­ties likes Sikhs and Dal­its. Both have been looted, thrashed and hu­mil­i­ated, time and again. Both have been de­nied their right­ful place in in­de­pen­dent In­dia. Sikhs and Dal­its have been forcibly in­cluded as Hin­dus in the Con­sti­tu­tion and their dis­tinc­tive men­tion at some places is only cos­metic. The op­por­tunis­tic scoundrels who lead In­dia ex­ploit the mi­nori­ties and other re­gional iden­ti­ties at the drop of a hat.

Will In­dia wake up to the real threats and fight back? The re­sults of the 2019 elec­tions will be a sig­nif­i­cant pointer in that di­rec­tion.