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POLL KHOL
Read what India’s political parties tell you in black
and white about themselves
Gian Inder Singh
 India
is holding elections these days. In Punjab, Akali Dal-BJP alliance
is fighting against the Congress and top two ruling families have
virtually turned the contest personal. Much of the electioneering in
Punjab as well as in rest of India has been seen as bereft of all
issues.
Neither the
people nor the political parties are taking the manifestos
seriously, a reflection of the current paradigm of discourse in
Indian society and media. In Punjab, the Akali Dal manifesto does
not even mention the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, and makes no
allusion to RSS which was termed by none other than the current SGPC
president as Enemy Number One of the Sikhs.
The Akali Dal's
transformation into a family fiefdom is complete, with Badal
father-son duo on th cover, no one else's photo and no mention of
Jathedar Gurcharan Singh Tohra who graced a full page in the 2004
manifesto.
The many
problems being faced by the Sikhs across the world find no mention
in the manifesto, neither is there any clear view on Akali Dal's
model of development, what steps the party plans to take to pull
people out of utter poverty or how will it end rank caste
discrimination in the land of the Gurus.
At the national
level too, the election manifestos of the Congress, the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) make
interesting reading, both individually and in mutual comparison.
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The Amarinder-Badal or Sonia-Advani high decibel verbal duels
have shadowed out of discussion any substantive issues facing
the electorate. Congress is dismissive of its rivals. BJP seeks
to outdo the Congress in terms of promises but has brought on
board its core Hindutva agenda. |
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The
Amarinder-Badal or Sonia-Advani high decibel verbal duels have
shadowed out of discussion any substantive issues facing the
electorate.
The Congress is
dismissive of its rivals and opponents and very generous in its poll
promises. The BJP seeks to outdo the Congress in terms of promises
while also bringing on board its core Hindutva agenda. The Akalis
are on Congress bashing spree, not even taking note of contribution
of RTI Act or NREGA scheme to uplift millions out of starving
poverty, and totally blind to communal agenda of the BJP.
The CPI(M)
manifesto provides a systematic critique of the ideology and
performance of both the national parties, spells out the role of the
Left during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime and sets
out its policies on a number of important issues before the people.
It does not follow the Congress and the BJP in providing a long list
of promises but sets out an agenda of what it would fight for, and
seeks popular support for this agenda.
Read the
arrogance in Congress manifesto: “... the only party that is
forward-looking, the only party that believes a better future is the
right of every Indian”. It calls itself a bulwark against
communalism, linguistic chauvinism, regional parochialism and
casteism. And forgetting that it survived with Left’s support for
most part, it accuses the Left of being responsible for the
electoral growth of the BJP, an accusation that will be tough to
swallow.
Both Congress
and BJP manifestos are silent, deafeningly silent, on the
unrelenting pursuit of liberalisation measures in the areas of
finance and foreign investment as well as health and education.
The Congress'
dishonesty is clear from the fact that the manifesto of the party
does not list the nuclear deal with the
United States
as one of its achievements and claims that the Indian economy has
been resilient in the face of the global economic crisis. How blind
can blind be!
The insistence
on invoking members of the Nehru family is something that will be
abhorrent in most modern democracies.
What uis
surprising is that in a country where the Congress manifesto
promises “… to enact a Right to Food law that guarantees access to
sufficient food for all people”, but qualifies this immediately by
the phrase “particularly the most vulnerable sections of society”
and where so many political parties at national and regional level
promise to sell rice at Rs.2 or Rs. 3 a kg, hunger is not an issue.
Various Indian
governments have played around with definitions and measurement of
poverty to the detriment of the poor, but there is no fighting among
the political parties on this issue.
The BJP
manifesto's long preface abounding in sweeping claims about India’s
past makes clear that the party lives in a rather romantic vision of
India’s past. Its focus remains on good and strong leader and for it
Advani fits the bill and no one else. It says that the “Chhattisgarh
Model” will be applied to counter the Maoists. Clearly, that shows
the de-link from democratic notions of human rights.
The BJP accuses
the Congress of fooling the people on the India-U.S. nuclear deal
but its PM candidate, the good and strong leader, Advani, has made
it clear that he will not scrap the deal.
There is no
shortage either of promises on health, education, welfare of senior
citizens, and so on, but the real and unique agenda of the BJP
manifesto surfaces in the very last section on “Preserving our
cultural heritage”. This has a strident assertion that the “BJP will
not allow anybody to touch the revered Ram Sethu”. It also asserts
the BJP’s commitment to build a Ram temple at Ayodhya, removal of
Article 370 and the status it confers on Jammu and Kashmir from the
Constitution, “relentless” pursuit of cow protection and cleaning of
the “revered” Ganga.
In times like
this, how will the Akali Dal defend its alliance with the BJP-RSS
and what has the Sikh community gained with an alliance with a
communal party, perhaps only the Badals can explain.
22
April 2009
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