The Sequel is an Even Bigger Hit


For once, the exit polls got the big picture right. Modi won, and the BJP got an absolute majority. There were surprises too. Like the BJP getting an even bigger absolute majority than last time. The BJP’s vote share rose from 31% last time to 41% this time despite a massive ganging up of all parties in pre-poll alliances. Rahul Gandhi lost in Amethi. Fortress Bengal was breached big time.

See the maps below of who won where in 2014 and 2019. Whatever the BJP lost this time in Andhra/Telengana, it more than made up via the gains it made in the North East, West Bengal and Odisha.
Mihir Swarup Sharma writes of the origin of the Congress’ “Idea of India”. At independence, especially after all the bloodshed of Partition, Nehru decided:

“India is a bundle of contradictions, of competing group assertions, and it is the duty of the Indian state is to play an arbiter between them, to cover up and manage these centripetal and divisive forces through inclusion, representation and occasional preferential treatment.”
Indira Gandhi took that last part and converted it into a vote bank. And the backlash against that “appeasement” took decades to come, but it came in 2014 with a vengeance… with an even bigger sequel in 2019:
“Modi's idea of India's future was that it should be strong, rich and Hindu, and that all three things would have to happen together or none of them would happen at all. And this, in a nutshell, is the dominant conception in national politics today.”

And therein lies the problem for the Opposition. What is it that they believe in, for India? Over the last 5 years, that word they hid behind for lack of any ideology, “secularism”, has been removed from the political vocabulary. And with that fig leaf gone, the Opposition is naked, without any ideology whatsoever.

Ok, so no ideology. How about governance? The BJD in Odisha is the only party consistently on the Opposition that can govern well. The rest are the likes of the incompetent Congress (can you name one state they govern well?), and the goons of Mamata, Mayawati and Akhilesh.

So what does the Opposition have to offer then? Conspiracy theories (EVM’s are hacked) and the-world-is-ending hysteria (Modi is destroying the RBI, the Election Commission and every institution they can think of).

Maybe the Opposition needs to decide on something positive they stand for, not just rail against what they are against.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn
Read more

Handling of the Satyam Scam

The Satyam scam. How does that fit into Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s book on reforms in India, Backstage ? The reason is that, as both NASSCOM and the government of India felt: “(Satyam’s) collapse would create a great deal of disruption for clients worldwide and seriously damage India’s reputation as a reliable source of software services.”   Therefore, the government decided to work with the private sector to “organize a quick takeover by a reputable new buyer, who would quickly restart the company”. But that could not be done overnight. In the meantime, the new board would have to reach out to Satyam’s clients and “reassure them that the company would survive”.   For the new board to have credibility when it made that statement, it had to be staffed with people who understood the private sector, the IT sector in particular, and commanded respect and trust. Deepak Parikh from HDFC was made chairman, and other members of the board included a former NASSCOM chairman, CII member,
Read more