SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
It is a matter of deep sadness and a sense of great loss for Goans that with about four weeks left for them to decide on whom to send to the Parliament, Goans do not have natural and obvious leadership choices before them either in North Goa or South Goa.
And if both the BJP and the Congress are still “searching”, shortlisting, and throwing up names from the same people who want to contest some election or the other, it’s a shame. While leaders jump parties for “development”, that development remains strictly personal to them.
When people are constantly hurt, denied and let down, how will confident leadership grow?
The BJP has not even managed to name a South Goa candidate in its first two lists. According to people, this is a clear indication that it has not worked on building leadership. But can leadership grow on a foundation of defected leaders and the overall sense of hurt and injustice that people of Goa have been voicing openly?
Congressmen and women have moved in batches from across communities and constituencies, giving the same “narrative” of development. But, has that narrative been bought by the people? Whose development did they defect for? Their own or Goa’s?
And with batches of defectors “decorating” more than half the assembly constituencies, is there a leader who stands tall among the people? If there were real leaders, then neither of the two main parties would be on a desperate candidate hunt with one month to go for polling in an election that happens every five years.
But who is hurt? Not those from castes or communities, but Goans.
MLAs have changed parties but have their voters moved with them? If they indeed had, the ruling party wouldn’t have been trying to throw up names to contest South Goa and coming up repeatedly short, even going to the extent of toying with names that are out of the Goan political and social landscape.
Goans are extremely unlucky that they don’t have people’s leaders, just mere political ones.
The discontent between political leaders and the people is too evident. And that is the difference between political leaders and people’s leaders. There is no leader in their midst. Only ones who are in politics for their own needs. No natural leader.
People are therefore hurt and disappointed.
On one side there are matka kings, with no image or reputation. On the other side are ticket conductors, sailors with priestly backing and white-haired toothless ‘lions’. What have they achieved and why are they looking for Lok Sabha tickets?
From the panchayat, Zilla Parishad, municipality, and Assembly to the Lok Sabha, the biggest sense of loss is the total disconnect between those who contest elections and those who vote for good governance and delivery of services. Not a day passes when Goans are not knocking on the doors of the administration, fighting for what is denied to them.
They range from personal to issues that matter to Goa and Goans. Be it subsidies to repair boats or fishing nets, or for seeds and crop reimbursement, or getting back money spent by them to repair bundhs, or fair compensation for land acquired or bigger state battles like double tracking of railway lines by encroaching into private property, stopping mining trucks from ploughing through narrow village roads dumping ore in fields, fighting against the sand mining mafia on river banks, or the hill cutting, forest destroying, hill damaging mafia which consists of big-time payers hand in glove with their “official” friends.
Goans wonder when political parties and their leaders speak about these issues in their campaigns, and write them in their manifestos.
When did you last notice a party making the time-bound delivery of projects without cost escalation and criminally punishing those involved in corruption in mega projects, a key part of their people-centric election agenda?
Instead, they have a power-centric agenda to serve only the special people with whom they have a special electoral bond. With big-time corporate funding of elections, this reality has only been reconfirmed with names of donors, they control the “puppet show”.
There is no need to even guess who the puppets are. They are the simple people, who still pray and hope that democracy is a reflection of their hopes and aspirations.
Unfortunately, the election process - to many voters - feels like a script played out to ensure that the big-time investors get their return on investment for the next five years. And governance has become all about working towards the return on their investment.
However, there is one problem that political parties face with this approach. When there is a deep sense of mistrust among the people at large and when this discontent increases by the day, the constitutional necessity of finding faces that can draw some inspiration becomes a big challenge. And that is exactly the challenge that even the ruling party is facing.
Ironically, the lack of conviction in the integrity of elected politicians cuts across parties leading to the same sense of struggle in finding candidates among non-ruling parties too.
Ultimately, all parties will find someone who will file his or her nomination leaving people with choices that are not theirs. But it is their undying faith in democracy above the demise of clean politics, (for most) that will still take them to the polling booth. It will show for sure that democracy is in motion, but is it still resulting in a people-centric force that the forefathers of our constitution had dreamt of when they framed it?
Let us leave this question in the minds of all of us as we get ready to be presented with the election schedule, to send two MPs from Goa, among the 543 in India, to represent us in Parliament.
