Are we maturing at the husting?

By K.N. Pandit,

The beguile has been blown for elections to the eleventh Lok Sabha. The nation is gearing up to see the new government in saddle after exactly one month from now.

The great battle for winning voters to their side has essentially been between two major national level parties, Congress and BJP. Unlike most of our previous elections, this time the focus has been more of persons than issues of vital national importance.

The biggest loss to Congress is that the deprived classes hitherto patronized by it have come out of the shell and established their identity. It has made a powerful expression of its case and has now risen to be a determining factor in the process of making a new government and a new prime minister. It has made a common cause with the Left who must see to it that they are the arbiters sans accountability.

Voters are just amused by the way in which the two prime ministerial candidates accepted to say good bye to courtesies and formalities and make diatribes and invective against one another. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the “iron man melting when things come to practicality” and Advani declaring Mnmohan Singh “the weakest Prime Minister”.

Strangely, what has been of much interest to both parties is to rake up old and long buried issues and take them out of Pandora’s Box – the Kandahar hijack, the Chrar Sharief trade off, the Babri Masjid issue, the Wandhama carnage etch. Nobody among the voters seems to be much interested in raking up old issues that are going to lead the nation nowhere.

The habit of poking holes in the pockets of their adversaries and opponents is generally attributed to school going children and not to seasoned politicians who know they have to lead a country of a thousand million people.

Curiously in an era of economic recession and a grim scenario of security, that should have formed the core of campaign of each contesting party, it is very disappointing to note that these vital issues are receiving only peripheral importance. When will this country wake up to the great threats to the survival of civil societies that have cast their lot with democratic and secular dispensation?

The scale on which anti-democratic and anti-secular forces are gaining ground despite a seven-year war on them by the most powerful country in the world, should be an eye-opener. With Islamabad regime hastening to let Swat have a sharia–run government and the contagion spreading fast to other parts of the NWFP and now right into the heartland of Punjabi ruling groups in Lahore, the signals are most alarming for India. We have yet to see a public leader of stature focusing on these vital issues. This was the time that all responsible political parties joined heads to cobble a national policy of resisting the onslaught of fundamentalism and terrorism steering eyeball to eyeball into the eyes of the nation.

Contrary to this expectation, the parties and their spokespersons have been doing stupendous mud-slinging and accusing each other of extending overt and covert support to the terrorists attacking our cities and civilians and public properties.

The people understand that our present crop of politicians has personal aggrandizement that strikes at the very principles for which this nation stood all the years of struggle for freedom and the decades of post-freedom reconstruction. Therefore our political leaders should not be surprised if they find a very harsh verdict coming from the electorate and for that we shall not have to wait too long.

While trouble is brewing fast on our western border, and we are sucked into the vortex of the unfolding scenario, our political parties find it difficult for them to forge a viable national security policy. Our eastern border is vulnerable and the Maoists are spreading like wild fire. We are receiving threats day and day out from the “non-state actors” across the western border. Are these signals not sufficient to warn us of the impending danger?

There is usually more of dissension than consensus at the National Security Council level because of vested interest and party aggrandizement. Recently we have also learnt about the sordid state of relations between our top intelligence agency and the Ministry of External Affairs. We should have seen the exit of the National Security Adviser before the exit of the then Home Minister because every one knows and the American intelligence sleuths have confirmed that there was abysmal lapse in the intelligence gathering mechanism in regard to 26/11. While we are crying at the top of our voice that Pakistan should dismantle its pro-active ISI structure do we ask the same treatment to our under-active intelligence outfit RAW?

Lastly a slew of financial scams that have been uncovered through various agencies in last one year show how rotten a system we are carrying forward. What measures are we taking to streamline the governance part that would devise deterrents to these scams which are not only a national loss but also national disgrace? Our judicial system gives the culprits a long rope and they know they have nothing to fear because everything is sucked in by vote-bank politics.

Some hope should generate somewhere for this nation. Our politicians have let us down. Our potential asks for de-freezing   and our vibrant activity demands space. The impending election should decide these vital issues.
The End.

Comments are closed.