Sans Any Formula

Now that the first phase of elections to the 15th Lok Sabha is over, and the battle continues in the remaining phases, it is imperative that we reassess the scenario as to whether the two largest national parties, the Congress and the BJP, have this time had any solid and substantial agenda to take the nation forward. The grandiose manifestos of both the parties, as anyone can see, are more a refinement of gimmickry, aiming at the impossible and thus attempting to hoodwink the electorate. There is no substance in their texts. In other words, both the parties have approached the voters without anything concrete in their agendas and without having to respect their aspirations. One may ask if there is anything new or radical in the Congress and BJP manifestos, to which the patent answer is ‘‘no’’. If anything, the two parties have tried to outwit each other on the strength of sheer rhetoric, of course under the assumption that the vast majority of voters in the country are in rural areas, are illiterate and backward, and thus can be manipulated to effect a particular voting pattern. The equations of caste and religion come in handy in that setting. Only, there should be an expert infusion of sloganeering to suit the kind of politics there. Even so, smaller parties seem to have outsmarted the bigger ones. The other fact of life is that this time allegations and counter-allegations have reached a new high, thanks to the vacuum of ideas and agendas. It is only when parties are bereft of blueprints for the welfare of the masses and are more into scoring points than competing in a healthy fashion because their brand of politics is so very poor and devoid of any development paradigm, that they indulge in assassinating each other’s character on a desperate survival mode. The Congress and the BJP fit that narrative.

Perhaps the struggle is best typified by what has happened in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous State and that sends the maximum number of MPs to the Lok Sabha. Neither the Congress nor the BJP is calling the shots. It is Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayavati’s Bahujan Samaj Party that have stolen the show and made it impossible for both the Congress and the BJP to improve upon their performance as compared to the 2004 tally. If the SP has taken away the Congress’ most cherished Muslim constituency and eaten into the lifeline of the country’s oldest political party in the Hindi heartland (thanks also to Lalu Prasad Yadav’s expedient bonhomie with the SP), it is the BSP’s new social engineering that has led to a sharp decline in the BJP’s fortune among the region’s upper-class voters, who have rallied behind the saffron party in the past but who today are mostly given to Mayavati’s wondrous political formula and reach — proven to the disbelief of both the Congress and the BJP. However, had it not been for the overwhelming bankruptcy in the two parties and their inability to confront the evolving politics with brand new ideas and visions of development beyond demagoguery, the BSP or the SP would not have positioned themselves as they have in recent times, flourishing in the space that the Congress and the BJP have left behind due to their acute poverty of formulae to appeal to the voters and be in their imagination as in the past. Where do the two parties, with their precarious coalitions, go from here? THE SENTINEL