Wednesday, May 20, 2009

My reflections on Indian Elections 2009

[Partly inspired by Vikram's blog on the same topic.
Check it out here ->
http://vikrams3.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/return-of-the-economist-my-reflections-on-indian-elections-2009/
The same disclaimer applies here as well. All the ideas expressed below are solely my own personal opinions and you are welcome to disagree. Well, see the previous post if it helps - Celebrate the differences. I am not a an expert in Indian Politics. So kindly pardon any factual errors. Take only the spirit of the article.]

I am happy that a stable Govt. is being formed at the centre. But is that the end of it? UPA can surely put some progress on its report card but I don't think it can do anything radical to change the face of India for the good. UPA has good(!) administrators but no great thinkers. They don't have the out of box thinking. Two examples to reinforce this view. The UPA CMP says it all. UPA has a common minimum programme and sticks to it. That is what anybody would do. Any sane average person given the power would do whatever is listed in CMP. What is so great about UPA then. It is just a middle class head of a house who manages things so that there is no unhappiness and the standard of living improves gradually over the time. This is perhaps one reason why most of the other parties would have no ideology issues with congress. This is also the reason why any party could go straight and give unconditional support to UPA. Another "out of the box" example - Most of the other parties gave out radically different speeches in the least (may it be Varun Gandhi or Mulayam Singh - what they said may be absurd - but nonetheless they thought differently) while Congress remained silent hiding under the same old CMP kind of manifesto.
The most recent problem of terrorism (or is it not very recent?) has been handled in the most sluggish way. When there is someone attacking our home, we should not form committees to discuss the issue. Sama, Bheda and dana are for the human beings, not for the Rakshasas - danda is the only way (the way in which Sri Lankan Govt. dealt with the LTTE, of late).

Congress doesn't do anything radical. Congress has its own 50 year old ideas and pushes them at the slowest pace. The leaders at Congress have learnt to govern the country purely by experience, no skills there. Just as a carpenter son/daughter learns it from his/her carpenter father/mother. (Perhaps Rahul Gandhi has not learnt it very well yet and hence doesn't get to be the PM this time!) Astonishingly they do it quite well, as long as we are satisfied with only a marginal growth and development.

Only hope is that the "sustained progress" is sustained and pray that no new problems come up with the UPA on for the next term. However, progress is definitely assured as Dr. Manmohan Singh continues as PM. Yet another hope is that he would be allowed to think and make decisions on his own this time.

India is blessed.

PS: Sama, bheda, dana and danda are four of the seven diplomacy techniques kings were supposed to use in ruling their kingdom.
PPS: Rakshasas are demons, or the present day terrorists (Rakshasas were in fact, better!)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A thoughtful post.

Perhaps, an average Indian voter felt that continuity of age-old Congress was a safer bet than a drastic change towards better (muscular foreign policy with BJP) or worse (Varun Gandhi's venom or Mulayam's no-computers regime).