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Choice is yours, our promise is it
won't be happy
WSN Bureau
 CHANDIGARH:
Hours after this WSN edition will reach your hands,
Punjab's
ruling Badals and former CM Amarinder Singh would be watching with
baited breath as voters trudge to polling booths on May 7 to decide
the fate of their kin.
Such is the
misfortune of
Punjab that the
state's fortunes have come to be intertwined with whether Sukhbir
Singh Badal's wife Harsimrat Kaur badal wins in Bathinda or
Amarinder Singh's son Raninder Singh trounces her. Amarinder's wife
Preneet Kaur is fighting the Patiala Lok Sabha seat against Prem
Singh Chandumajra.
Finally,
Punjab
seems to be up for grabs. One party is trying to maintain its vice
like grip with the help of an alliance that gets its inspiration
from the philosophy of Hindutva and reports to the RSS. This is the
saffron lobby that celebrated the destruction of the Babri Mosque
and under whose watch the
Gujarat pogrom
of the Muslims took place. The other is the party under whose watch
the 1984 Operation Bluestar took place as did the genocide of the
Sikhs.
The BJP is
projecting Hindutva hawk L K Advani as its Prime Ministerial
candidate even as Narendra Modi looms so close to the power center
that any human rights activist will shudder in his thoughts. The
Congress, jolted by the shoe of a Sikh journalist, did withdraw the
tickets from 1984 genocide guilty Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler
but has no compuctions about handing over the ticket to Sajjan
Kumar's brother. We have not heard any special promise to the Sikhs
about bringing to justice the other guilty. And no one has even
asked what are men like Sajjan Kumar or Tytler even doing in any
political party?
Any
right-thinking citizen in
India has a
Hobson's choice. Catch-22 is a bad place to live in, but such is the
paradigm of politics that there really are no options. The chimera
of development is repeatedly shown to the people by Indian rulers.
The problem is that the vision of development is no different in
case of both main political formations, Congress and NDA.
 The Left, which
had many better values in Indian politics, is tottering, and even
though it calls itself a better alternative, no one is ready to bet
that it will not align with any formation that does not have BJP in
it. Left's own role in Nandigram and Singur has made it a suspect
and it will have to do much more internal and serious thinking to
win back any respect.
Meanwhile, even
as India
escapes recession and faces economic downturn, it merely talks about
holding on to a better growth rate, but does not even want to start
a debate on why 836 million people live on less than Rs 20 a day,
and why hunger and poverty are no more an issue.
Any voter will
have much to think about on May 7 and May 13, and it is not going to
be an easy choice. Even after the choice is made, it is not going to
be a happy choice.
6
May 2009
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