The 15th Lok Sabha election is important in many respects. It has taught many lessons for the nation. Most politicians see in it the emergence of the two-party Parliament. The era of regionalism as also the castist wars is seen as over. Obviously this augurs well for the future. The Congress is buoyant. The Congressmen have all the praise for Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh.
BJP, the principal Opposition party has shown a dismal performance. BJP couldn’t come unto the 2004 mark and had to remain satisfied with paltry 116 seats as compared to Congress getting the awesome 206 seats. In the 2004 year election it was said to have failed because of over confidence and the “India shining” slogan. The still poorer performance this time has stunned the party as well as its supporters. According to observers this happened because of strong leader (i.e. Shri LK Advani) and decisive government as well as weak PM type slogans.
A defeat almost always leads to a blame game. The BJP is busy in the same. The fact is that this time the BJP has got only 19 per cent of the total votes cast. One estimate is that it got 10 million less votes as compared to 2004 election! The party failed to exploit the widespread public resentment on extraordinary price rise, the Mumbai terrorist attack, the growing layoffs and rising unemployment in the middle and upper classes and the suicide deaths of small and marginal farmers. On the other hand the Congress blamed BJP for the Kandhar episode, the terrorist attack on the Parliament and successfully diverted the dialogue to the blame game initiated by Shri Advani. Generally the people did not like the attack on the person of high integrity Dr. Manmohan Singh. Weak PM though true, was over emphasised. The focus should have been more on the absence of democratically elected leader that undermines the institution itself.
The NDA “fair weather” partners have nothing but adverse comments. Modi, and Varun Gandhi have already been repeatedly voiced out as the main culprits by none other than Sharad Yadav, the present NDA Chairperson. Dhingra has added BJP’s communal agenda and criticism of Dr. Manmohan Singh as the additional reasons for the loss of votes. Nobody has bothered to find reasons for the unexpectedly poor performance of BJP in the Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. The success in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka has received little praise. Neither has there been much discussion on reasons of extra-ordinary success of Dr Raman Singh in Chhattishgargh despite very adverse circumstances and very powerful opponents. The blame game may go on. But the reason(s) of the extraordinary success of Congress needs to be duly explored too.
The Congress chief is not the son of soil and has been brought-up in the land of Roman Catholic Pope and Mussolini rather than that of venerated rishis of yore. Yet she commands great popularity. What is worse, ask any aam admi if he is better or worse than what he was five years ago. Invariably the answer will be he is worse off. The prices of practically every consumer commodity of the masses have risen many fold since the Congress-led government took over. As per the Planning Commission estimate over 5.1 crore people have been pushed below the poverty line in the last five years. The internal as well as external surroundings of the country have become dangerous. As many as 182 of the 602 districts of the country are Naxal-infested where the common masses and the security forces are getting killed almost every day. The army is said to have a shortfall of around 11,200 officers. There is great resentment amongst the defense forces. The venerated awardees have returned their medals. There is great dissatisfaction and new recruitment is getting difficult. On the other hand terrorism is on the rise. During the year 2008 alone there have been about 66 bomb blasts in the Indian cities.
Much has been said about the extraordinary rise of Congress in UP. The fact that the Muslim votes may swing in favour of Congress and withdraw from the BSP and the Samajwadi party was expected but only at the margin. However, this alone couldn’t do what the results show. Why did the BJP fail to be patronised by the Brahmins and the upper castes in general? It is said that BJP was practically neglected in the towns. But did anybody explore that the towns now have a very large number of poor and working people who despite the fact of being hard-pressed due to price rise invariably voted for Congress. Why? Much is said about the youth supporting the Congress because of the new economic order that promises a better future. Nobody bothered that the proportion of this part of youth is extremely very negligible. Yet the fact remains that BJP which had no opposition to the new economic order failed to get support in the towns because the non-committed did not bother to vote.
The AIADMK General Secretary Jayalalithaa and BJP have added another dimension—the probable irregularities of the Electronic Voting Machines. Both parties have sought re-introduction of ballot paper system of voting. The AIADMK even passed a resolution, stating that “some developed countries have reverted back to ballot system of voting due to irregularities in the Electronic Voting Machines.” The BJP Orissa State president, Suresh Pujari said, “ Since the United States and many countries have stopped use of EVMs in election, we should stop the practice in India too.” The Internet has articles blaming the EVMs for being easy for manipulation. One example will suffice. Satinath Choudhary retired professor of computer science, and president of Better Democracy Forum, the Bronx, New York writes, “Producing doctored EVMs is child’s play: Computer chips that control the EVMs can be easily programmed to do all kinds of improper manipulations. For example after a certain number of people (perhaps hundreds) have voted, the rest of the votes may be channeled to a chosen candidate. This is just one among many mischievous tricks possible.” Choudhary also indicates how this kind of fraud can be easily remedied. Dr. Subramanian Swamy in his article, “EVMs are not tamper-proof”, Organiser (June 7) has said, “Numerous electronic voting inconsistencies in developing countries, where governments are often all too eager to manipulate votes, have only added to the controversy …. On the eve of the 2009 elections in India, I had in a Press conference in Chennai raised the issue and pointed out that those who had been convicted in the US for hacking of bank accounts on the internet and credit cards had been recruited just before the elections.”
Satyameva Jayate is what we have been taught. Rishi-shakti and Kshatriya-shakti together would be able to overpower the evil forces. In the present Bharat while “pseudo-secularism” may be rampant and may adopt the appeasement policy at the cost of the nation it will take quite a few years to re-establish the Sarvadharmasambhava. There need not be any religion of the government but the state must maintain Sarvadharmasambhava. Our fight is against the prevailing concept of the so-called ‘secularism’ borrowed from the western culture. The nation must keep the flame going. Ultimately the truth will prevail. We need to keep in mind that before the new sunrise the darkness of the night becomes dense. Satyameva Jayate is what we have been taught.
