India is becoming a bi-polar polity.
The unexpected success of the Congress Party and the UPA in India's recent general election along with the decimation of the Left and the caste-based parties is a vote for stability. It also signals the emergence of a bi-polar polity as only BJP and NDA are the second largest party and the group in the next parliament. The UPA with 263 seats ( including 206 of the Congress) has been given the mandate to rule for the next five years by the electorate. The NDA with 159 seats ( including 116 of the BJP) will have to sit in the opposition to keep the ruling coalition on its toes.
Now the UPA and the Congress have no excuse for not delivering good governance. They can go ahead with the reform agenda on the economic front as they have been liberated from the clutches of the Leftists ( indeed heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of another age) – re-structuring the public sector which includes corporatising, privatising, down-sizing and even vacating (why should government own hotels and airlines when rural people do not have drinking water and primary schools and health care ?) , encouraging private and foreign investment, labour reforms etc. The new government is also free from the caste-based parties who had many leaders with corruption charges and who have no clue as to what is good governance.
The BJP and the NDA have not been able to highlight the lapses of the government properly to the electorate. The major failures of the Man Mohan Singh government in preventing and punishing repeated terrorist strikes and the phenomenal price rise in daily requirements such as cereals and vegetables were drowned in the media with some minor issues like the pub-bashing incident in Mangalore and some violence incidences following the murder of a respected Swami who was running schools in Orissa. The BJP, the NDA and the media failed to nail the government on the colossal leakage of funds meant for rural employment and other development schemes. There was hardly anything which could be called an achievement by the government. The one thing on which Dr.Man Mohan Singh was ready to sacrifice his government – Indo-US Nuclear Agreement – was not even an issue in the election. Nobody is sure how this will benefit India in the long run, if not in the short run. India would still be at the mercy of uranium cartel, if not the oil cartel. Neither the BJP and the NDA, nor the media have done their job as watch-dogs of the public interest in adequate measure. The media even said that the election was issue-less. What a farce !
The only silver-line for India is the emergence of a bi-polar polity in India.
May 29,2009.
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