Effete, ineffectual, enfeebled and weak- kneed — call them what you will, what is now universally accepted is that this government is under the cosh for being a wimp. The journey southward began as far back as Sharm- el- Sheikh, that is actually the very first tentpole. Ever since, as it hurtled into an abyss, lurching from one crisis to another, trying its best to stay afloat and relevant to the nation’s political narrative, the government’s first and only reaction has been about self preservation and survival.
While it has shrewdly manipulated the numbers to keep its head above water, working its allies and those who have supported it from outside, they have lost the moral authority to remain in power. Now more than ever. One can argue that when has politics been about morality, or alternatively, which politico has morals? The love for the kursi has been paramount.
The primacy of remaining in power has taken the moral sheen of the government, which is seen to be hankering to stay in power.
UPA II against people power
While Anna Hazare and the Lokpal movement threw into stark relief the intensity of people anger, the December 16 gang rape and the sheer helplessness of women folk in this country accentuated the hurt, resulting in spontaneous angst at the imperial Rajpath — the very symbol of power in the land. The wheel had come full circle and this wasn’t helped by brutal police action, first, against Ramdev at Ram Lila Maidan and then against students at the door of Rashtrapati Bhavan. The protests in the immediate aftermath of December 16 became iconic, for they showed a helpless and abject government pitted against people power. This calendar year has only seen this rapid descent into total chaos expedited. Call it bad vastu or equally bad karma , but the life and times of UPA II has been littered with humiliation.
Just as we believed that the Anna Hazare movement was a defining moment, the December 16 aakrosh was the culmination of this fight against authoritarianism.
As sticks were wielded and tear gas shells lobbed, students struck back, defiant and angry.
No one came to assuage their hurt, no one stepped forward to calm their sensibilities.
Karnataka is the key
The beheading of an Indian soldier, the land grab by Chinese troops in Ladakh, the brutal beating of Sarabjit who was finally flown to India in a body bag, has only highlighted the effete State, its ineffectiveness and its completely blasé attitude incongruous with the sentiment of the time. Obviously, you cannot go to war over these issues, but you can have a better, sharper and more insightful response system to combat these myriad problems.
As another parliamentary logjam takes its toll on legislative business, one wonders whether this is the beginning of the end.
The die may well have been cast; after all, in this season of government bashing, one is dismayed at the ineptitude displayed by the State in responding to different crises. Call it governance deficit, call it being in sync with what the people of this country want, one asks the question — is this the government that we deserve? Yes, we the people of India voted for this government and to our misfortune, we find that its efficacy to deliver governance has been hobbled by its overwhelming desire to cling to power. I hold no brief for the Opposition and in the main, a fractious BJP, which continues to make a mockery of its plans to come to power, but I reckon that the UPA may well have to come to the end of days.
Why do I say that? Because both legislation and policy have gone into deep freeze. The nation and its people are seemingly caught in a time warp, a time warp that has lasted nine years. As we now go into the last leg of this government’s tenure, the immediate first thing that will hit us between the eyes is the Karnataka elections.
This is the barometer.
Logic says that the BJP will be turfed out from the state after the mining excesses and rampant plunder of natural resources.
But the ground is shifting rapidly in the state; early opinion polls suggested a landslide for the faction ridden Congress. This might be overstated and the BJP using Narender Modi as a battering ram may well have made deeper inroads in the recent past. In any case, it appears that KJP leader B. S. Yeddyuruppa and JD( U) leader H. D. Kumaraswamy may well have a bigger role to play in government formation.
The Karnataka elections are crucial for the machinations at the Centre, the principal national parties’ thinking on general elections would be predicated on the result there. If the Congress wins, the top leadership may well decide to accelerate the process of going to the hustings. Though one hears the leadership triangle is split. The chairperson wants to run with the ball this year itself ending the misery as it were, the strategist reckons that there is too much taint to drag them down while the veep believes that in the eventuality that the party doesn’t get a clear mandate ( of the kind that it got in 2009), it makes more sense to sit in the Opposition and support a third conglomeration from outside.
With this kind of mixed response, the fear of the unknown stalks the political class. With four key states including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi set to go to the polls later this year, a default middle class vote will be cast against the Congress. In any case, an antiincumbency vote will be cast in Rajasthan, a pro- development vote in MP and Chattisgarh, and an iffy scenario for Delhi CM exists in the light of recent brutalities on women and children in the national capital. The bottom line is that this is not a good time to be a Congress politician.
The die is cast
Politics is a cruel and fickle mistress and politicians know that. There are too many imponderables for the Congress this time round even if they believe that the rural vote untouched by corruption scams and ineffectual leadership will consolidate behind them. Between Sarabjit, Chinese incursion, Indian soldier beheading, people anger will manifest itself strongly and its reflection found through the instrumentality of the Electronic Voting Machine. The question is when?
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