Ervell E Menezes
The Congress juggernaut keeps rolling, albeit haltingly, weighed down by years of incumbency, decades of by-default supremacy and trial-and-error democracy, and seems to be gradually but inevitably grinding to a halt. Its crown prince Rahul Gandhi has been given No 2 status and like his mother power without responsibility. “My mother came to my room last night…” he told the press, but these Nehruvisms just do not work today. It did when Pandit Nehru mingled with the aam admi (the term was not even coined then) in those distant and simpler times but you can’t fool all the people all the time, can you? Some rural folk today still believe that Indira Gandhi is the daughter of the Mahatma. What’s in a name, indeed! Recently Rahul was in Mumbai emphasizing the need for discipline in the party. “We won’t tolerate rebels,” he went on rather shrilly, scarcely a clarion call it was meant to be.
Was in New Delhi recently in and around Parliament street trying to gauge the pulse of the people and realized that the anti-Sonia sentiment was overwhelming. The reluctant leader, like her husband Rajiv, had given way to a woman comfortable with pulling the strings from behind though not as vindictive as her mother-in-law who had split the party in 1971 and pulled the rug under the feet of tried and tested stalwarts. Sonia has not only neutered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was an excellent finance minister but is also without any clear game plan. Mayor Sheila Dixit was even more abhorrent and seems to be irremovable and allowed New Delhi to earn the dubious distinction of being the most unsafe Indian city.
After passing a please-all Budget, finance minister P Chidambaran seems to have thrown his hat into the prime ministerial ring and could be to the crown prince what Manmohan Singh is to Sonia. The South Indian brahmin’s arrogance is only too well known while his competence is not. It looks like a rather poor combination of also-rans with Kapil Sibal and other seniors who have hung around for years but have scarcely proved themselves. So the Congress think-tank, like Mother Hubbard’s, is indeed bare.
Also, the lack of a clear verdict by any major party has given place to coalition politics where regional parties get their pound of flesh and have made the likes of Mamta Banerjee and Jayalalitha too big for their boots. But the coalition era is here to stay. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has now brought up the Lanka Tamils issue to trouble the much-harried Congress.The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, has a much better track record and are girding their loins for power.
Narendra Modi is their man for the prime ministerial seat and is the only leader who has won three successive elections ~ a hat-trick. And the party has launched a “400 day road-map,” shades of LK Advani’s rath yatra when they rolled to power after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. The road-map will consist of worker conferences in the different states to muster support for the party. Party president Rajnath Singh was vehement in his attack of the Congress in a well-worded speech that ran thus : “Just as Ram killed Ravan, Krishna killed Kamar, Obama killed Osama, corruption will kill the Congress.” The work of a clever copywriter no doubt. The party has also chalked out a clear-cut programme.
A college colleague of mine who was in Gujarat for a week couldn’t stop singing Modi’s praises. “As a minority we are supposed to be anti-BJP because of the killing of innocent lives in Godhra for which he went unpunished but I’m inclined to give him a chance, at least for a term. We need a change from this dynastic rule,” he went on heatedly as he spoke of the wonders Modi had done.
Because of weather conditions his plane was diverted from Jamnagar to Rajkot, so he had to make his way to Jamnagar by cab and he covered the distance in just over an hour. The roads are superb and the people seem to have forgotten his gory past. But can Modi rise above the party with it’s Rashtriya Swamamsevak Sangh (RSS) core? That is the million rupee question?
In the past we have seen that the RSS just refuses to put the mandir and Hindutva card on the back-burner which leaves us very much between the devil and the deep blue sea. And don’t we all know there is nothing more corroding and subversive as communal acrimony.
After the Delhi gang-rape incident the spontaneous outburst of the people, the aam admi to be precise, was a good sign and could well have snowballed into a major change. But the impetus did not last long or may be it was quelled by interested parties. Too much was at stake. True, the 400 days to the elections is too short a period to form a third front of the younger generation but a start could well be made. Like-minded folk should get together in the fight against corruption and it must be devoid of any political hue because have we not seen the Anna Hazare crusade being hijacked? An apolitical movement seems to be an impossible dream but the time has come to give the impossible a chance. Let’s shed our cynicism and start anew.
The seeds of change can be sowed during this elections and the project carried forward after that. It seems to be our only alternative in a dismal, corrupt theatre we call India. We have not had a new party for a long time and “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” One just cannot rule out such a possibility but work hard for this goal. With 65 years of freedom behind us we are still a young nation. And there is still hope.
