Delhi elections are round the corner. The political parties are gearing up for the polls. The people I.e. voters seem to be tired. They are tired of politics that covers everything — from selection of candidates and ticket distribution to campaigning, canvassing, polling and the five-year run-up to the next elections. In between, there are the oft-repeated stories of fulfilled and unfulfilled promises, claims and counterclaims, multi-hued propaganda, scandalous stories of corruption and wheeling dealing, tales of neglect and accounts of appeasement. Some pockets of citizens are placated, and others are punished. The political arithmetic of majority votes runs in full flow before and after the elections — in subdued flow. The governance seems to be centered around consolidation of vote banks more or less always, whether it is election time or not.
Look at the current AAP Government in Delhi in the saddle of power continuously since 2013. It has served its voter constituencies rather well albeit short term, with disregard and disservice of other sections of voters. Long term, both sections of voters stand to lose.
The voter arithmetic revolves around the system which gives a simple majority the power. In 2015, the AAP won 67 seats out of 70 while getting 54.3 percent votes while BJP won just 3 seats even after securing 32.3 percent of votes. What happened in 2020? The AAP won 62 seats with 53.57 percent votes polled in its favour while the BJP won 8 seats after securing 38.51 percent of all votes cast. The arithmetic always seems to be pointing at a disproportionate representation in the elected assembly. As many as 38.5 percent voters have little or no voice in the assembly —and the governance. The system of government formation based on majority seats won with stark mismatch between proportion of votes polled and proportion of seats won seems to make a mockery of democracy every time, election after election.
Stupendous amount of public money is spent on every election. But the voters get a raw deal, by and large. The petty benefits accruing to the nurtured constituencies are lollipops in the form of freebies. The AAP model of governance is built around freebies. It works and works pretty well in a state where there are large, well defined and well demarcated chunks of economically marginalised sections. It works well where there are such sections of voters who are communally aligned.
The concept of true nationalism spells out what is good for all sections of the society, what is in line with equality, equity and justice. If nationalism be given a distorted definition, democratic values will be eroded. Communal politics and politics of freebies are contrary to democratic spirit. They kill fairness and justice. AAP does not have the correct concept of nationalism in its preamble. Its politics, therefore, is misaligned with democratic values.
What is needed in the current context is education of the electorate of Delhi on who benefit short term by subscribing to and supporting the AAP. The AAP is nothing but an outfit of left leaning liberals who neither have a concept of the Creator nor of the true moorings of Bharat as an ancient nation with a civilisation resting on eternal, divine values coming from that Creator. Its political pronouncements are replete with profane lies. Whether it is the infamous liquor scam indicting many bigwigs of the party or the allegedly red balance sheets of DJB and DVB stated to have been sneakily swept under the carpet or it is the many minor criminality cases of its legislators, the AAP stands badly stigmatised. It’s brazen acts smacking of administrative impropriety, economic malfeasance and political corruption need to be widely publicised to reach our electorate at the grassroots level.
Public money coming from taxes has to be responsibly spent. Displaying irresponsibility in expenditure of exchequer money and then misrepresenting or concealing facts has apparently been the forte of AAP Government. This needs to be highlighted with facts and figures in political campaigning in the run up to the elections.
Delhi needs better facilities in terms of roads and public transport, cleaner public places, better control of water and air pollution and a generally more citizen friendly government than the self- professing AAP Government which has only hoodwinked the masses into voting in its favour. The antics of freebies and self- glorifying rhetoric should not be allowed to succeed this time around.
