A clear mandate

Arun Jaitely's early response after the BJP's debacle in the big polls, "Absence of Atalji affected us." Certainly true, but in my opinion, what affected them more was the presence of LK Advani, a peson who stayed in the shadow of Atalji not because he was loyal to him but because he lacked caliber. All the vigor he had, he wasted it in spreading hatred in the name of Babri Masjid and even till date there is no solution to the problem (even after a full tenure of NDA government).

There was no agenda in place for NDA, all they knew was - if we come to power, our most senior leader (capable or incapable - not a question) is going to be the prime minister. Not because he wants to take the nation to new heights of progress or he wishes to serve the country but because he has an aspiration of becoming the prime minister of India once before dying.

Apart from the Ayodhya escapade, he has nothing to his credits, he boasts of being a loyal politician for 6 decades. It might be true, but in no case this implies that instead of carving out policies for the country, penning a smart agenda; you just tell your people that I WANT TO BECOME PM, now this is upto you that how you guys campaign, how you bring me to power.

Let me tell you one thing as straight as it could get - this is not America; here party, its ideology, its agenda is given more credit, more value than the leader of the party. Even Obama won not because of his clean image or being a democrat, or the incumbency factor or Clintons, Gore backing him up, but only because people of America found a ray of hope in his 'Yes We Can' campaign; he had a clear agenda, a clear thought process and at very few instances he talked about John Mc Cain, he was more focussed on his own strategy instead of demeaning the rival's approach.

And in no sense LK Advani is Obama (he prompted Dr. Manmohan Singh for an open debate, just like the one between Obama and Mc Cain), he is not young, he has no new approach, he is not at all a secular (more on that after a few more paragraphs), he can't actually praise or admire his rivals, he has more of a constrained, restricted approach towards nation building.

If BJP had projected Mr Modi as their Prime Ministerial candidate, the picture surely would have been different, but they saw nothing apart from Mr. Advani. Not that Mr Modi is a secular person, but he is a torch bearer, he is a development enthusiast, exactly the kind of man India needs at this developing stage.

Still, I am happy (so is corporate/rural/urban India) with this victory, this mandate. Some of the salient points, I particularly liked about these results:

1. An almost clear mandate to UPA, hence a stable, self-reliant government.
2. Communal/regional parties (that cashed upon hatred and narrow-mindedness) received a slap on the face, viz., Shivsena, MNS, RJD, SP, BSP.
3. Left-scarcely left, no more outdated restrictions for the new government due to a bunch of oldies who themselves are not sure why they are still leftists.
4. Many biggies having a tainted image lost, viz, Paswan, Lalu (in one of the two constituencies he contested), Sadhu Yadav and a few more, particularly Bahubaleez.
5. Shashi Tharoor contested from Trivandrum as a part of Congress and won by over 1 lakh votes; people like him if enter the parliament, India is going to be in the league of developed nations in no time.
6. A whole brigade of young guns contested and won the elections - Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora, J Scindia, Rahul Gandhi and a few more.
7. Rahul Gandhi said no to the pre-poll alliance with SP, and still got 22 odd seats in the big state of UP.
8. BJP got a bashing from the states that it took granted for. For instance, in last election, BJP won 21 out of 25 LS seats in Rajasthan, and hence they started feeling - this is our bastion, we don't need to do anything here, we can anyhow win. But the people reversed the mandate in Rajasthan and strongly stated that you can't take us for granted; you don't work, you ought to suffer.
   

Varun Gandhi, another fiasco, another hole in the stumbling boat of BJP. He tried his hands at the old clichéd hindutva mantra, he tried to woo the hindu extremists; though he won a seat for himself (in the hindu prone region called Pilibheet), but somewhere down the line tainted the image of BJP as a whole. In the global era of cut throat competition, famines, floods, recession, rivalries with not only immediate neighbours but far flung nations too; how can we afford to keep fighting within?

There is no time, no space for being communal now. Indian politics is a caste driven politics for sure, but the masses have started hating communal extremists (all kinds, hindu, muslim, sikh); regional strifes can find no place in the national politics, it may provide some goombah, a few hoodlums who may try to out power the minorities based on caste, region, race, creed or whatever, but will never find the support of the masses from now on.

Be it the Shivsena, the Bajrang Dal, the MNS, the Ram Sena, we don't like you. We might disagree with a certain section of society but the way you reciprocate - We don't agree with that. We hated it when you kicked the poor bhaiyas out of Bombay, we hated when you almost molested club-goers in Mangalore, we hated when Christians were killed in the far off eastern regions of India, we hated when the simple definition - Anyone who is involved in terrorizing is a terrorist - was not understood. We, as the new people of India hate you, we don't find any damn attachment with any one of you. And this mandate was in a way our answer.

Enough of politics of hatred, enough of blame-game, enough of communalism, enough of communism, enough of regionalism, now we shall come out of all this negativity, step into a new foray with a new open approach with a combination of fresh and experienced blood in the cabinet that can usher the Indian subcontinent into a flourishing garden of variety of flowers.

--sudharm baxi