Rajeev Kumar
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| (Courtesy with Eenadu Telugu Daily) |
The most important lesson from the elections in the four major states is loud and clear: It is not going to be business as usual in Indian politics.
This may well be the watershed in the development of Indian democracy and India reaching its 'progressive moment.' The moment when the old world politics of casteism, money power, muscle power, hereditary privileges and rank opportunism gives way to the new, issue-based politics that derives its electoral appeal from grass-roots movements, accountability, and a strong anti-corruption, good governance platform.
Governance
Such a conclusion is due not only because of the amazing debut of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) but also because of the third terms won by both Shivraj Singh and Raman Singh. And the resounding defeat of Ashok Gehlot who spread government largess in the last year as if there is no tomorrow.
The defeat of Sheila Dikshit, a frontrunner in the polls for her personal capability, must show to the Congress high command that what they or their minions do in the name of the part sticks to people's memories - which are no longer as short as Congress power-brokers like Ahmed Patel and Janardhan Dwivedi (who accompanied Sonia Gandhi to the press conference where she accepted defeat) would have us believe.
The hypocritical 'pro-poor' stance of the Congress party, which combines its charity at public cost with a feudal and ultra-elite living style, has been shown up for what it is - a complete sham and electorally defunct.
The voters from Delhi, with its high middle class population, and from Chhattisgarh, with its high share of tribal population and excluded, have demonstrated that this is now a country of a billion aspiring people who want good governance to achieve rapid and sustained growth.
They will accept the handouts either of 'public subsidies' or the bottle of booze on pre-election night, but will vote for those who will be seen as representatives and not the rulers, and whose credentials for honest and efficient delivery of public services are relatively better.
They will not be hoodwinked any longer by charity and handouts from those who hide in sheer luxury behind high walls, and 'enjoy most heavy partying into the night' only to publicly hold forth in a perpetually angry voice on behalf of the excluded.
But we cannot go overboard and begin to believe that from now our democracy, which has certainly passed a historical milestone today and demonstrated in great measure the wisdom and sagacity of the Indian electorate, is on auto-pilot.
There is a long way to go before those who win elections exclusively on the basis of identity and dividing the community, with the help of 'bahubalis,' or by throwing goodies at the people are thrown irretrievably in the dustbin of history.
To achieve that the necessary condition is the rapid growth of the middle class, which in turn is based directly on rapid economic growth and spread of modern industry and technology.
Service provider
These elections, like those earlier in Karnataka, have demonstrated that the division between the rural and urban voters and more generally between 'Bharat' and India is increasingly irrelevant.
Indians are now being driven by the universal urge to improve their material existence and ensure that the next generation lives better than them.
To push this movement further forward the media, civil society and the Indian intellectuals will have to work with even greater honesty and drive and not relent.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for example must realise that it is not their promise of 30 per cent cheaper electricity or the promise to give 12 instead of nine gas cylinders that have allowed them to scrape through on this occasion.
The clean image of Harsh Vardhan, the modern working style of Nitin Gadkari, and above all the dynamism and openness of Narendra Modi who addressed more rallies in Delhi than all other national BJP leaders taken together, were responsible for getting them barely past the post.
I can bet that if the party had not declared Harsh Vardhan as their chief minister candidate the Delhi electorate would not have hesitated to dump them along with the Congress.
Even now they will have to be on their toes with a strong opposition led by a person who has national aspirations based on pushing ahead with the anti-corruption and good governance agenda.
Perhaps Delhiites will get a government that is not a ruler but a service provider, as the BJP campaign posters have promised.
Road ahead
Since the exit polls made it clear that the Congress will be routed, and today as that rout became a reality, some journalists and all the spin doctors of the Congress have gone out of their way to assert that the outcome of these four state elections has no bearing on the forthcoming general elections. This is sheer denial.
Thankfully, the president and vice-president of the Congress did not repeat this and admitted the need for deep introspection at this stage. But this introspection should not lead them in the wrong direction of denying the present challenge and escaping into the mirage of organisational restructuring, which as we know happens best when the organisation is grappling with the problem at hand rather than in classroom lectures and on the drawing boards of well-meaning consultants.
Mahatma Gandhi did not hold leader training workshops with elegant graphics to make the Congress a deeply democratic and dynamic force.
Yes, the material and technological conditions may have changed, but the means of motivating the cadre remain pretty much unchanged. It will be advisable to learn from AAP's thumping debut and Kejriwal's success rather than from foreign consultants.
But for that, the Congress vice-president will have to immerse himself full-time in politics, warts and all, and not do it on the weekends for selected photo-ops.
For the BJP, it is time for even greater effort. Vasundhara Raje has demonstrated how sustained hard work pays off handsomely. Modi has led from the front on this. But they can now slip into complacency. That would be fatal.
AAP's leaders surely realise that the rest of India is not Delhi. Communicating their message to raise an army of millions of volunteers and not thousands that sufficed for Delhi will be tough when the internet penetration is only 12% and social media still largely an urban phenomenon.
With their arrival, however, there is a prospect that elections will once again become a festival of democracy and not the dreadful and deadening dirge of cynical professionals who used elections for illegal gratification and couldn't give a damn about the people. We can all be optimists again.
The writer is a Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research
Courtesy : Mail online India
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