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Amidst farcical times, India
goes to polls
Gian Inder Singh
 India
goes to elections next month amid happening times. The ruling
Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is promising to make
Manmohan Singh, the country's first Sikh Prime Minister, once again
the top man, and is thus trying to cash in on his personal integrity
and reputation as an able economist. As for how the Sikh community
views Manmohan Singh vis-a-vis its dreams of an engagement between
New Delhi and the Sikh issues is a separate matter.
Significant
voices from the Sikh community like Bhai Daljit Singh, the Panch
Pardhani Akali Dal, have decided to pull back from the
money-mafia-muscle dominated Indian electoral contest scene. The
ruling Akali Dal has publicly said the Anandpur Sahib Resolution
cannot even be discussed and Parkash Singh Badal-Sukhbir Singh Badal
duo is burning mid-night oil to make L K Advani the Prime Minister.
So you have a
strange convergence of diverse facts: the SGPC president is on
record saying that the RSS was the biggest enemy of the Sikhs, but
has also told the SGPC members to work for Akali Dal-BJP alliance.
The Akali Dal has said it will be only and only part of NDA and will
not join any other formation. L K Advani has claimed credit for
pushing Indira Gandhi into Operation Bluestar, and Badal wants him
and no one else as the Prime Minister.
At a time when
the Badal Akali Dal is feverishly stating that its alliance with the
saffron Hindutva right wing party BJP is not political but a meeting
of the souls and that it is a relationship as good as the one
between 'Nauhn-Maas' (nails and flesh), BJP's other alliance
partners are waking up to a new reality. In Orissa, Navin Patnaik
wanted to salvage his secular image and dumped the party even at the
cost of threat to his own BJD-BJP government. It was a parting of
ways after 11 years of marriage.
In Assam, the
AGP has said it only has a seat adjustment with BJP and is not part
of the NDA. Only in Haryana have Badal's friends Chautalas tied up
with the BJP.
At the national
level, the Third Front talk is becoming stronger. Senior CPI(M)
leader Sitaram Yechury is trying out possibilities with Navin
Patnaik, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, TDP
chief Chandrababu Naidu and BSP leader Satish Chandra Mishra. Left
has often dreamed of a decisive shift in the policy direction but
has repeatedly made the mistake of failing to lead from the front by
setting an example.
Unlike Badals
who feel comfortable in Advani company, Bihar CM and Janata Dal
(United) leader Nitish Kumar is stuck between political realities,
his personal dislike for BJP and survival of his government. Former
Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda is hyper active on Third Front issue
and TRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao and AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa
seem to be still deciding.
Meanwhile, the
BJP campaign remains focussed on L K Advani whom the party wants to
project as a “strong leader” thus trying to paint Manmohan Singh as
a “weak PM”. The BJP is planning to launch its campaign
carpet-bombing style with huge rallies on March 16 across the
country.
Both parties
have selected advertisement companies. JWT for Congress and Frank
Simoes and Utopia for the BJP. With mobile telephone subscription of
35 crore, SMS campaigns wil be all over and Internet campaign will
also be full throttle. All of it, of course, will remain focussed
primarily on Advani as far as the BJP goes.
The Akali Dal
position is very very weak and the BJP has written off its
Punjab
partner who may not be able to deliver even a couple of seats.
Sukhbir Badal is keeping everyone guessing about whether his wife
will fight the Bathinda seat simply because his intelligence team is
not very sure it can be clinched by using all tricks in the trade
including the kind of violence that
Punjab had
witnessed during local bodies elections.
The UPA had made
unemployment a major campaign issue in 2004 and promised the
creation of 1 crore jobs every year; but with recession, the BJP in
2009 will try to focus on the UPA’s failure on this front. That it
will be hard put to not acknowledge the hugely successful NREGA
scheme that guarantees job to rural and urban India for 100 days a
year and the empowering effect of the Right to Information Act is a
moot point.
Akali rhetoric
remains in a time warp, stuck in the same old groove: "Congress is
the enemy of Punjab, Centre discriminates against Punjab and Punjab
is going through unprecedented development." There is a kernel and
more of truth in Centre being unfair to Punjab, but coming from the
Badals it loses all the sheen of the truth. More than the Congress,
the BJP is an ultra-nationalist, its parent RSS is a votary of Hindu
rashtra, and L K Advani a rank communal man, but the gurdwaras of
the Sikh quom and the national resources of the Sikhs are being used
to make Advani the Prime Minister.
11 March 2009
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