Bharat, the crucible of democracy is once again poised to enter a pre-election phase as elections to the eighteenth Lok Sabha are upcoming in 2024. The voter is up for grabs by all political parties and it’s time that the Indian voter casts an informed vote.
Bharat Jodo Yatra is one of the events in the backdrop of the 2024 elections, which was launched by the Indian National Congress on 6 September 2022.
The nomenclature and general objectives of the Yatra as reported in the media were to join a breaking Bharat through Love. One of the core issues here is whether Bharat is really breaking and needs to be joined? What is the INC trying to join?
Let us examine the issue of Bharat and whether it has been broken and needs to be joined.
Territorially, one of the very first areas of Bharat to be integrated into the mainland in the past eight years has been the North East. What was taken up as a policy in 2014 received a fillip with the State Government in Assam joining the process in 2016. In his address to the nation on the 75th independence Day the Prime-minister concretised the ‘new history of connectivity’ in the North East preparing grounds for development of the region. Assam was joined as was Arunachal through concrete road and bridges over key rivers. According to the government almost Rs 13500 crores of rail, road and connectivity infrastructure projects are in the pipeline for the region. In fact the government has now undertaken to operate the Act East policy to join the North Eastern States as a gateway to South- East Asia. North East has firmly joined to the mainstream in the past eight years through a policy process rather than yatras or any road show.
The second area in which Bharat has been joined in a real policy sense is in Kashmir. In August 2019 the Government of India displayed extraordinary political will and a reading down of Article 370 and 35A was undertaken. The former State of Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated into two Union Territories. The complex and convoluted political process in the region was reset. Over the next 25 years there is a possibility that Kashmir may slowly integrate with Bharat. We may actually be able to re-join an area that was completely lost to the Indic civilization through a sustained religion based Information War.. Both North East and Kashmir are areas that were integrated through strong political will and policy changes. Not only are these areas where the country faced severe internal security challenges these are areas where the local population suffered due to cross border deep state activity. Joining these two areas to the Bharatiya mainstream are steps that the country will be thankful for years to come. The benefits of these steps in policy driven nation building will be accrued to coming generations as the ground shifts from years of violence and neglect.
Let us now turn the lens towards the social fabric of this country. Much against their core voter base, the current government has chosen to reach out to minorities through policy driven schemes. Current parliament data shows that minorities, especially Muslims have been the largest beneficiaries of the government’s Welfare schemes in the past few years. Data on this is available. women have been mainstreamed in the most fundamental ways in the past few years. Starting from construction of toilets to Ujjwala and going on to opening the defence forces for women, the policy thrust has been tremendous in mainstreaming sections of society that were hitherto marginalized.
Not only has Bharat been welded together internally through well-crafted and fast paced and out of the box policies, but Bharat has also been joined to the globe. Today the world recognizes India’s soft power be it the International Yog Day or the extremely efficient Mission Sagar carried out by the Indian Navy during COVID. This mission reached out with resources to fifteen friendly nations in the Indian Ocean. So ultimately is the Bharat Jodo Yatra really needed to join Bharat? If not, what is the Bharat Jodo Yatra all about?What is it? Is it talking of any concrete policy?
The Bharat Jodo Yatra is centered around a feudal idea of leadership in a country that has now gone beyond such elitism. It is built around the sicon of a political party that has in the past has similar yatra’s with real mass leaders in its ranks. Subhash Bose, Sardar Patel , Gandhi were mass leaders of the Indian National Congress who undertook Yatra’s centered on political and ideological ideas that moved the nation. On the contrary the Bharat Jodo Yatra devoid of any real idea’s or has not yet articulated any real ideology. Who is a people’s leader? Is it someone who has risen from the ranks, whose family is still living the life of commoners and who has spent years in public life or is it someone who is banking on a legacy? Why did the Bharat Jodo Yatra not come out with a credible policy regime that would help the voter to decide in the impending elections? Can it be that the Indian voter is stupid enough to cast a vote based on ability to run or do push-up’s. Is the Bharat Jodo yatra even bringing together a credible opposition or are we simply seeing a montage of starlets and once upon a time bollywood stars joining the yatra for a fleeting moment.
The brief survey above has served to underline that if the Bharat Jodo Yatra is intended to highlight the policy lacunae of the incumbent government it has more work to do. The Policy initiatives of the current incumbents have not only been unique and integrative but at times they have also been risky and against their own mass base. In that sense the current government has given a policy direction to national development. The brief survey above has only marginally touched the policy initiatives of the past eight years. India is a huge country with mind boggling differences and ever persistent fault lines. However it has only seen a stronger coming together.
(Sonali Chitalkar teaches at Miranda House, University of Delhi. Areas of specialization are International Relations and Policy).
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