Retreat for a triumphant take-off in May 2019

With the Lok Sabha elections just a few months away, the political parties have geared up to woo the citizens of India to set a position at the centre. Focussing on public welfare, people’s demand and reconciling the relations abroad, India has come a long way making a respectable place for itself on the international forum. With developing at a progressive rate, the upcoming Lok Sabha polls will write the future of India with connecting right chords with the audience.

A lesson to learn:

A careful study of the electoral battle played in two large states in the country, for ‘welfare of the poor’ in the country, leads to the following decisive factors which have tested both the parties before effecting change-over of ‘power ‘to enable them to undertake welfare programs for the poor. It should be considered as a good lesson for those who won as well as those who lost. The following factors need to pondered over as the eye-opener for all those concerned.

1. Attitude of taking voters / people for granted boomeranged.
2. Communication and interaction with the voters fell short.
3. No effective reply could be given to the criticism hurled at by the opposition esp. Rahul Gandhi.
4. The ruling party leaders underestimated the competence of the opposition leaders.
5. The ruling party suffered from a natural tendency of day-dreaming with overconfidence.
6. Fifteen years in power in the state, generated a sort of self-complacency among the ruling party cadres.
7. The mood of the sporadic disgruntles on the part of the voters in quite a few by-elections, could not be read by the party-managers in power.
8. The State leaders indulged heavily in a rest-assured conviction that announcements of several ‘welfare schemes for the poor’ would persuade the voters in their favour. This did not happen.
9. A tilted social equilibrium alienated some sections of the society against the rulers over the visibly heavy tilt witnessed towards a section of the society (by treating these as a vote-bank).
10. The Prime Ministerial utopian plethora of assurances for a better future was not digested by the impetuous voters.
11. Both, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, were long standing citadels of the erstwhile national party like INC. This historical fact was ignored and underestimated by the present ruling party leaders.
12. Rahul Gandhi was personally targeted and criticized exceedingly, which helped him to emerge as a competent and the only opposition opinion builder. This was proved by the results.

Besides these , the following factors looked emerging for theoretical analysis.

1. There is a necessity in the Indian polity that the political parties working in India need further socialization.
2. The trend of offering false promises as a bait to the voters needs to be regulated and curbed.
3. A time seems to have appeared to consider the functions of the State i.e. whether the electoral polity has shown symptoms of drifting towards its excessive edge.
4. The Indian polity needs a re-galvanized liberalism to nourish a healthy democratic culture.
5. One has to address to a serious question as to whether the federating State has of late become ‘a little shaky’. Can we analyze possibly the main factors, responsible for its being volatile? This question needs a serious rethinking since the future of parliamentary democracy is at stake.

The fierce fear of the future:

The fierce tone of the opposition party leaders in the recently concluded elections has sent waves of fear in the minds of the well-wishers of the parliamentary democracy in the country.. False and utopian promises and assurances made to the voters, criminal low level personal attacks and allegations against the ruling party leaders esp. the Prime Minister and his Office, false and baseless unverified allegations without realizing its implications, threats given to each other, the most unruly, incriminating language used in public speeches, these and many more reasons have set the ensuing battle in 2019 as the most fearful in its vulnerability. One can see the damage that is being caused by the parliamentarians in the legislative Houses when in sessions. The proceedings of the Houses are stalled and at times several important Bills are carried through without discussions and debates. In many a cases, the Bills are passed when in the sessions, and are in in the thick of crises. The legislatures, in fact, have failed in their duties to perform legislative functions. The question is ‘at whose cost’? It has a become a matter of ‘paying each other in the same coins’. A funny image of the honorable legislative House has emerged as a place of ‘exchange of personal enmities, issues and rivalries of no values’, ego-satisfactions of one another with exhibition of revengeful threats. There is no place for a studious debates and discussions on matters of public problems and relevance. Bills are passed on the basis of numbers and not on its merits. Debates, leave alone erudite ones, are seldom conducted, instead members aggressively surround the Speaker’s well and thwart any attempt to hold discussions on the floor of the House. These unruly members force the Speaker to suspend the proceedings of the House. The working days are lost. The expense on the cost of conducting the proceedings of the House is lost. Who cares? Is it for justice? Is it in the pursuit of truth?. I for one feel that people now have become wise enough to understand the hypocrisy in such tactics of disallowing the proceedings in the House in the name of justice and truth. Is the floor of the House a place of ‘truth seeking’? What is truth-seeking? The great hypocrites talk tall talks of falling standards of parliamentary debates and discussions, and these very actors contribute to its declining order.

The need of the revision:

The lacunas narrated above need to be repaired and checked in the public interest. The measures adopted to check these are not suggestive of authoritarianism or centralization of power, the purpose of such measures is to emphasize the priority of ‘nation first ‘attitude. There is a school of thought who advocates individual rights as higher than everything else, perhaps including the consideration of the nation or its security. However, it could be seen that the other school of thought who respects the individual rights but not above the national interests, consider it as subordinate to the national interests since majority of the citizenry feel that way. Is there anything wrong in this approach? Allegation of authoritarianism is itself authoritarianism per say on the part of those who make it. The question arises as to how can the minority views overwhelm the rest of the majority view?

It is not appropriate to think that bread and butter alone is the sole objective of the human race. It is a primary basic necessity of life of an individual, is true. However it is not enough. There are yet other considerations which also weigh much more in the life of an individual. Nation and nationalism is one such consideration. The individual is well prepared to commit any price to achieve it. Several instances from the national and international history could be cited in this regard. Evaporating quality of a sensible and constructive criticism from the opposition is the real problem. The falling standard of the level of criticism on the part of both—the ruling as well as opposition benches , which has been there for quite some time now, has raised an alarm of caution for all those who care for parliamentary democracy in India. It is absolutely necessary to find a way out at the earliest.

There is also a school of thought which believes that there is a limit to depend on the self-elevation of one’s level of understanding. The leaders could be persuaded to behave properly and decently in their performance in public to a certain extent, that too for a specific period of time, however, after a certain amount of time the individual shows signs of going berserk .Large amount of education, persuasion and ethics based orientation need not necessarily enlighten the leaders/public speakers and elevate these to a higher standard.

The doctrine of liberty revisited:

The basic question while defending the ‘right to liberty’ is , yes ‘liberty’ is fundamental , it has to have a vast scope, true, but in the socio-political crisis we are in, to what extent it could be set go unbridled ? The other side states that ‘liberty’ is in danger. Is it really so? Does anyone find or experience that in our country is there a new family clique, or do all trends of the ruling psyche point to the growing tendency towards concentrating political power in one individual or a single family ? The data before the electorate is certainly otherwise. The media hype is relentlessly towards this ill-founded aim.

Can one take liberty at “Liberty”?

Part III of the Constitution of India guarantees the citizens of India several fundamental, unalterable rights including right to resort to the Supreme Court of India for his assertion of liberty (Under Art.32). “The Constituent Assembly has secured to the people of India the guarantee that "No person shall be deprived of his... personal liberty except according to procedure established by law" (Art.21-Constitution of India). Dr.B.R.Ambedkar too has asserted that right to liberty under Art.21 is the most important Article in the Constitution.

The following referential reading is very important and relevant too.

Reminder of ‘duties’:

“Now-a-days, terms like ‘right to education’, ‘right to information’ and ‘right to protest peacefully’ are being used quite frequently. Many a time, you also feel that you have certain rights. Simultaneously, you may have been told by someone, may be your teacher, that you have certain duties towards other individuals, society, nation or the humanity. But do you think that every human being enjoys the rights or everyone performs the duties? Perhaps not. But everyone will agree that there are certain rights that must be enjoyed by individuals. Particularly, in a democratic country like ours, there are rights that must be guaranteed to every citizen. Similarly there are certain duties that must be performed by democratic citizens. Which is why, the Constitution of India guarantees some rights to its citizens. They are known as Fundamental Rights. Besides, the Indian Constitution also enlists certain core duties that every citizen is expected to perform. These are known as Fundamental Duties. This lesson aims at discussing the details about the Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties.”

Are we going to ponder over what we referred to above?

The concept of ‘Opposition’:

The critiques offered by the opposition leaders and the media, is based on half-baked, insufficient and misconceived twisted data. At times, blatant lies-driven allegations are hurled at the Executive. Their objective is to demoralize the Executive, to satisfy the egos of a handful of opposition leaders. These are miles away from the truth therein. It is such a sad affair that we find that today’s ruling when it becomes tomorrow’s opposition, the same scenario is repeated. No lessons are learnt. The mockery of parliamentary democracy continues with harder blow. As at present, the scenario, be it in the legislative Houses or public meetings or public debates, everywhere the standard of the decency and etiquettes seem to fall entailing the fear of pushing the democratic structure to the brink. The ‘opposition’ in the present political set-up seems fast deteriorating and converting the plight into a state of personal enmity. The ideological differences and its advocacy or substantiation seem to have been pushed at the background and the matters seem to be pushed ahead onto the battlefields. Allegations and counter-allegations by the party leaders have become handy devices in the hands of the media which thrive on these ‘interesting stories’.

Excessive politicization of the ‘opposition’:

Excessive politicization of every issue in public domain has belittled the development plank. The objective of development has been pushed behind, even ignored. If the process is not arrested, the intimidating battle-field is not far away. There also appears a perfect blend of hypocrisy, cynicism and politicization on every issue in public affairs. Every player in the political spoil game competes with one another with rampant mutual allegations

“In India, we have a large number of political parties. There are a few parties which have a definite socio-economic program me to work for. They have chalked out a definite framework of action to pursue the programs and policies for which they stand. However, there are many parties which do not have any coherent program or policy to fall back upon. Their purpose is simply to aspire to come to power by hook or crook.

“Official Opposition party refers to the non-ruling party or coalition that has secured the highest number of seats in the Lok Sabha. The status of opposition party is given only when a standalone party secures at least 10 percent of the seats. In India, for the period of 2009-2014, the official opposition party was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ruling party for the period of 2014-2019 is BJP. However, there is no opposition party for the period (2014-2019), since not a single party managed to secure at least 10 percent of the seats.

“The role of opposition party in India is as important as that of the ruling party. They ensure that the acts of the ruling party are not detrimental to the interest of general public or nation at large. The opposition ensures that the ruling political parties have a definite program and policy to offer to the people and who can show a progressive path by action and not just by propaganda.

“The role of the opposition party is not to oppose every decision of the ruling party. Rather, it is the duty of the opposition party to support the ruling party for the acts that are in the interest of the nation. The political parties should work among the people, win their confidence on the strength of their propounded goals. They must build public opinion in their favor by suggesting alternative programs and policies which could practically take the country forward to the enjoyment of better standards of living.

“In this context, there are a few political parties which can aspire to play a constructive role and can hope to come to power with a swing in political education among the masses. The flaws of election process need to be removed. It needs to be ensured that only the right candidate wins the election. Money plays a great role in elections. There are unscrupulous rich politicians who buy the votes with money, throw temporary advantages to poor people at the time of polls.

They make false promises which they know they cannot fulfill. It is, therefore, essential that the role of money power should be entirely eliminated from the electoral process.”

( Source : https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-role-of-opposition-in-Indian-politics ).

Where do the opposition parties in India stand? A time has come to introspect seriously on the part of all those who are involved in this process.

The Fear looms:

The fear of uncertain future has cautioned the society in general and the poor and middle class in particular. Sagarika Ghose on this fear has aptly narrated in her column published on dated 2^nd January’19 of the Times of India. It is very true that irrespective of the outcome of 2019 elections, the civil society has a greater responsibility to take care of ‘India’ by asserting the power of the sovereignty of the individual while selecting their future ‘pradhan sevak’. Once the chance is lost, it will be futile to repent later. The voter has to decide unto himself not merely to decide what next, but also to prioritize the determination of ‘nation first’.