Election 2009

This year's election has been long over, a new government installed, and the result has been hailed in the media and the blogosphere in general as a victory for stability, for youth, for defeat of religious fundamentalism, and for development. I differ with these views on many counts as I do not think that voters throughout the country have come together and voted this present combine to power, in order to achieve all this. For example, if we look at the Mumbai results, Congress would not have won if SS and MNS did not divide their votes between themselves. So, the result is more due to the complexity of electoral arithmatic that the Congress/UPA played better than their opponents. If there is a single underlying trend, it is the consolidation of Muslim votes towards the winniers and away from the losers. More of electoral arithmatic there.

I am writing this not for analysing the results.. I am not qualified to do that, and also there have been some excellent analyses already. I shall extensively link my post to columnist Santosh Desai's op-eds in the TOI. For analysis, read this: Analyzing the constant election analysis ,
then this: What the election results say about us.

What particularly depresses me is the ascend and more ascend of Dynasty in Indian politics. My deeply-ingrained democratic outlook cannot ever conform to this. The whole thing is nauseating to me. Look at who have won: the INC -- once a party of stalwarts, now reduced to a single-family owned loyalty-to-the-family-bound party (I do not belive Rahul Gandhi will ever seriously do anything to topple the system where he and his immediate family are is the main beneficiaries... we all have noticed how he often mentions his 'family' in his speeches, almost equating it with Congress and India); the NC (the Abdullahs); the DMK (Karunanidhi and his children from many wives).... no need to give any more example. The parties which are based on families and personalities rather than on core ideologies have done better. For that matter, I do not think much of ideologies, becasue that pushes a a party towards dogma and rigidity, but then in a matured democracy it is also not desired that if a situation arises where the core leadership of a major political party suddenly gets eliminated by a mishap, the whole party collapses!

The parties that are structured and where power does not flow down bloodlines, are, on the one side of the spectrum, the leftist parties, and on the other, the BJP. Both have done comparatively poorly in the hustings. I cannot think this is a good trend... I'd not like to die seeing Priyanka's son as the future PM... :(

Please read anothe excellent article from the same santosh Desai that appeared on the 8th June's TOI: Dynasty: Undemocratic but alive and kicking

If we look at the media, almost the whole of the English media is partisan... we have seen Pronnoy Roy visibly getting irritated when he spoke with an NDA fellow -- smile returned to his lips only when the bearded face of Suresh Kalmadi came back into his focus again :) Less open in his bias, and (cleverly) subtler in his analysis, is Vir Sanghvi. He will occasionally even write against the dynastic politics, but his main focus then will be on the Karunanidhis and the Sharad Pawars, and not on the Gandhis (who I think are the real fountainhead of this dynastic malaise). He will also deride the Congress some times in his articles, but then it will be against Sheila Dikshit and her BRT corridor, which will be, needless to say, sweet music to the ears of the High Command! Sanghvi's masterstroke, however, is to regularly trash P V Narasimha Rao, never failing to use the term 'crook' to describe this ex-PM, who probably for the first time in recent history posed a real danger to the family, who was the harbinger of economic liberalization, did many more good things (I’ll write later on him), but who also allegedly bribed JMM (now now, what a coincidence, Manmohan Singh has also been alleged to do so in the aftermath of Left withdrawing their support during his last term, but then, as ironical as irony can go, one is termed a crook and the other a saviour, for committing the same sin!)!