Po­lit­i­cal An­a­lyst Dr H K Bali, Ac­tivist in Health, Ed­u­ca­tion & Rural De­vel­op­ment -Dr Pi­are Lal Garg, Po­lit­i­cal Ac­tivist, af­fil­i­ated to CPI(ML) -Kan­wal­jeet Singh and Se­nior  Jour­nal­ist, Dainik Ja­gran-In­der­preet Singh en­gage in SP Singh’s Daleel to de­code the lan­guage used in Elec­tions 2019.

As In­dian pol­i­tics deals with the new po­lit­i­cal ter­mi­nol­ogy of Ali and Ba­jrang­bali vot­ers, lib­er­als and bhakts, the si­lence over achhe din and the noise about anti-na­tion­als, and as any se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal de­bate is marred by loosely flung ref­er­ences to damaad ji, sur­gi­cal strike, Rafale and Mann ki baat, we see a politi­cian work­ing over­time to catch your at­ten­tion. Abuse is the new nor­mal, as se­ri­ous con­tes­ta­tions fail to en­gage us.

Why is our elec­tion­eer­ing not sharply fo­cussed on the is­sue of un­em­ploy­ment, on agrar­ian dis­tress, on the state of our econ­omy?  Of course, it should also cen­tre on is­sue of na­tional se­cu­rity, but we have turned even that into a par­ti­san is­sue.

It should worry the elec­torate when a neta makes big promises, and it should worry them even more when the same neta does not men­tion these again. Chowki­dar chor hai re­duces the de­bate, just as the in­ces­sant noise about Pak­istan re­duces the de­bate. Bal­akot is im­por­tant, in­deed, and so is the promise of 2 crore jobs a year.  Na­tional Se­cu­rity ver­sus farm­ers’ dis­tress is a bad bi­nary.

Prob­lem is more se­ri­ous than Rahul Gandhi telling us that Modi is a friend of Am­ba­nis and Ada­nis. The role of crony cap­i­tal­ism in In­dian pol­i­tics is a se­ri­ous is­sue, and Con­gress has a lot to an­swer.