Editorial

No Rational Response To Reality

The idea of ‘getting some people rich first’ was put forward by Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping. And today the rich in China are enjoying the fruits of Deng legacy. In India it is the idea of getting rich quick by indulging in electoral politics, that works. It is a short-cut, rather a time-tested short-cut, to get fame and fortunes, by way of investing minimum resources in electoral market, albeit the election-oriented economy has became a huge business enterprise over the years. These days various forces with dubious distinction have begun to get involved in electoral politics, resulting in disorder, chaos, and mocking at the very constitution for which they are in political fray in the first place.

One scam after another. Commonwealth Games, 2G Spectrum, Coal, VVIP Chopper and now farm loan waiver scam. And yet no mass upheaval. Nor does Opposition furore go beyond the boundary wall of parliament. Everybody has taken it granted that corruption is a way of life for politicians irrespective of their mass appeal, locally or nationally. Unlike Italians, Indian politicians seem to be corrupt and inefficient as well. Simply focusing on scam which may–or may not–mean anything to broad masses, is not the answer. Nor does media trial reflect an exact picture of reality.

Loan-Waiver Scheme was an electoral gambit and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) managed to return to power in 2009 mainly utilising farm debt politics against the backdrop of innumerable suicides by farmers. India is a showpiece of uniquely low-developed democracy where money, not political conviction can always buy votes. It doesn’t matter whether it is loan money or grease money.
The party in power—Congress—knows the limits of the main Opposition Party—Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Despite periodic noises in parliament it cannot really gain extra mileage by continually blocking transactions in parliament over this scam or that scam. ‘Bofors’ had long been a staple for the Opposition but the Congress party survived the ordeal without being critically injured at any stage of anti-Congress agitation. After all the BJP-ruled states also regularly hit the headlines for corruption and undue favouritism shown to the ruling family members.

Most political parties are literally without any job as the ongoing budget session this time is a lacklustre event. Issuing press statements from time to time without taking any trouble to organise mass protests is all that they can do to expose the anti-people budget exercises of Mr Chidambaram.

The class composition of most parliamentary parties, left and right alike, is more or less same—it is the middle class with assured social security. They talk of poor from the angle of benevolent feudal lords. By announcing government sops for the people struggling for survival, they think they are doing a great service to the nation. Even communist parties being integrated into what they call mainstream culture, actually nurse elitism while paying lip service to the cause of the poor. The elites irrespective of their party affiliation are elites and, they have their own logic to deny democratic rights to vast masses. In other words they have redefined democracy as a rule of minority over the majority. What is written in the constitution is one thing and what is to be practised in the field is quite another. All their political activities are centred around vote and how to win vote. Somehow all of them have come to an understanding that the best way to solve a contentious issue is not to solve it all.

Regional satraps too don’t differ from their national big brothers in outlook. If they sometimes agitate for some region-specific issues it is because they have succeeded through their ‘public risk, private benefit’ posture, in convincing their constituencies that regional disparity is the root cause of all evils under the sun. To some extent allegations are not baseless either. But they don’t strictly adhere to regionalism to make their presence felt at the centre. And they have a tendency to indulge in extra-regional exercises, to erase their local image.

With the general election, not far away, both DMK and AIDMK—the two Dravid parties that play musical chair in Tamil Nadu—are now making noises about war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army against ethnic Tamils. DMK demanded that India support the US-sponsored resolution at the UNHRC against Sri Lanka. But at no point of time they made it a life-and-death question to save Tamils in Sri Lanka. Both hawks and doves in New Delhi are unlikely to back the US move as their regional hegenomic aspiration much depends on cooperation, not confrontation, with Colombo. Then there is the China factor. That a growing China is a competitor to India in asserting hegemonism in South Asia is a fact of life.

For one thing Sri Lanka’s barbarities against ethnic Tamil population didn’t start with the advent of Tamil Tigers in the scene. Even when the demand for secession (or Eelam) was not there, ethnic Tamils had to face one pogrom, after another, courtesy : Sinhala Chauvinism.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 36, Mar 17-23, 2013

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