Until about a few weeks back, I was rummaging around within my head, grumbling that yet again I could not cast my vote in an election in India. Here we are, a superlative diaspora that has taken over every nook and cranny of most countries and corporations in the world, and yet we don't have overseas balloting in place. With this angst, I was twiddling my thumbs, half-expecting to watch the mantle of power slip away and fall into the hands of the BJP and its khaki-clad maniacs, who would again set us ten years back.
But lo and behold! Our gregarious voters have thumped Manmohanism on the back yet again, even if their motives might be questionable. Within a month, the fortunes of the stone-aged and rabble-rousing ilk of the bitter Advani and Modi team has spiralled down into the murky depths of the Ganges.
I am a little late in igniting fire-crackers, so I will let that display of triumph pass by. I am sure that thousands of my compatriots have already danced on emptied streets and burst a million crackers in jubilation. However it's hard to not wonder at the fact that this is the first time in the last 50 years that the same Government has returned to consecutive power after an election. None, not even Indira Gandhi or A.B. Vajpayee, had managed this. More impressive is the fact that Congress actually managed to strengthen itself further by having more than 200 seats this time. Call it the result of fractious infighting in other parties, or the dereliction of the fanatic saffron parties by their bruised allies such as BJD, but the truth is that the BJP is failing even more nowadays in achieving its single objective - to fool all the people all the time. I, for one, am really glad to see their fall. I do not hero-worship Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi, but I would prefer them anyday over the dodo-ist, head-in-the-sand Advanis or Modis who still have not been exempted of the alleged massacres that they have led in the past. Opportunistic as they are, they have also somersaulted on their own "dynastic politics" rhetoric they kept shooting at Congress by hosting Maneka Gandhi and her son from their party. An Indian voting for the BJP is like a German voting for the Nazis in 1933, where either sheer blissful ignorance or boiling and misplaced venom can be the only motivations.
What is even more amazing is how Rahul Gandhi has juxtaposed the possible misplaced expectations that the rally-attending masses of our country has from him, with the opportunities that he had while at the helm of the Congress campaign. Focussing on the correct issues and the right amount of media posturing worked solidly for his team, while his embittered cousin distanced swing voters even more with his Hindu rhetoric. Whether Rahul Gandhi and his ilk emerge to be leaders of substance or not, is something that we shall see unfold over the next five years. However this time, it shall be a much more transparent callibration of the Congress mandate, with no ambiguities of policies now that unwanted ingredients such as the Left and the RJD are out of the soup. 417 million voters put in their ballots this year, and the giant jigsaw puzzle that is the Indian map has shaken itself back into political shape again.
If one is a pessimist who never gives up, then this is the moment to rebrand oneself. For every 75 MPs who have active criminal records in the new Parliament, now there is one IIT-IIM alumni in the Lok Sabha (Prem Das Rai from Sikkim). That is some glimmer of hope. Since none of us are ever going to bring an overnight revolution in the country, the only path of furthering the future is to watch the radicals run home one by one.
It's slow and noiseless progress, almost like a glacier. But I welcome it.
Celebrate
1 day ago