Nothing but Politics

In five years, the stature of the PM and his government has declined palpably. Simultaneously, Parliament has reduced itself to a non-deliberative, non-serious, populist forum. These trends are ominous and need to be flagged by the citizenry, not just taken for granted

Ashok P Singh Delhi

Five years of Hardnews are rather well placed. The birth in the wee hours of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had India shining. Then, quite unexpectedly, the sun set on the Vajpayee government, leading to the phoenix like rise of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. What do we expect now? From ashes to ashes or is there going to be a twist in the tale?

Conventional political theory says that periodic elections give the voters an opportunity to judge the performance of the government of the day and ring in change if the performance has been unsatisfactory. A contrarian viewpoint is that democratic processes are not so benign - that at election time, opportunistic politicians deceive naïve voters and make them believe the incumbent's performance was misleadingly good. Characteristically myopic, the voters are duped by the immediate present, lose sight of the recent past, and are not able to discern the credibility of the future promises.

The truth, as is usually the case, lies somewhere in between.

This is how most democracies approach elections and India is no exception. At election time, the goodies and the promises rain down. Will the voter bite the bait? Will the UPA succeed where the NDA perished? By one perspective, these are but ephemeral questions. Governments will come and go but what are the enduring legacies? That is the hard question.

We focus on five question marks the present dispensation leaves as a legacy for India's future. What follows is a deliberately one-sided view. It is also a concentrated one. The attempt at inclusive growth and many other commendations of the UPA are not discussed. We focus here on the dark side. The actors of the present dispensation are not just the coalition partners of the UPA. The opposition and all democratic institutions, the media included, are inescapably a part of it. If the axe appears to fall more particularly on the Congress and the UPA that's but the incumbent's hazard. Scratched below the surface, each of our questions bears the pugmarks of the sum total of our polity. Not unfairly, the whole and not just a sum of the part will be visited by the consequences.