The general election of 2014 has drastically altered the pattern of political relations in India. We now have a dominant party ruling at the centre with a clear majority. While BJP is the ruling party, on the opposite side of the same coin is Modi, the undisputed leader of the party. The BJP victory in the general elections was largely the creation of one individual – Modi. After the elections, Modi has been able to consolidate his hold over the party and his government.
Many people see danger in concentration of power in one individual. In the central government today, Modi is behind all important decisions. The other ministers in the cabinet all play a subdued role. The tendency to check up with Modi before taking crucial decisions is evident in the case of all ministers.
The business community has an undisputed adoration for Modi. This attitude is evident not only among domestic business leaders but also on the side of prospective foreign investors. The entire business community looks upon Modi with such admiration and hope that one wonders whether all this expectation and hype will be shattered sometime in the not too distant future. Modi is yet to do all that the business community had expected of him. But the business leaders have not lost hope and attribute the slowness in decision making to Modi’s policy of gradualism.
However, nobody can wait with hope for all time to come. There is a time limit after which supporters will lose their patience. Perhaps the next union budget is the time by which the new government has to deliver. The budget would have given almost a year’s time to the government to take important decisions. What happens in the next budget and the run up to the budget will be crucial for the continuation of the popularity of the new government and also it’s Prime Minister.
The BJP’s ascendance has coincided with the Congress’ decline. The Congress Party is yet to come to terms with its reduced status. There has been no introspection in the party which has led to a clear diagnosis of the ills that plague this party. The party should give up its pretense that Rahul Gandhi will one day emerge as the Prime Minister of the country. He could be a party president but the party should give up projecting him as the party’s PM aspirant, even if only by stealth as it has been doing all along.
Sonia Gandhi also seems to have done her bit in politics. It is time for her to retire. Rahul could take on the mantle of party president and should not aspire for anything more. It is time the Congress Party projected a dynamic young leader like Scindia as the possible PM candidate in waiting. If Priyanka is chosen to fill this void the party will be committing the same mistake which led to its debacle in the last elections.
About six months before the last general elections there had arisen an opportunity for the Congress Party to mend its ways. At that time the party had many strong leaders on its ranks like Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tiwari, Anand Sharma and so on who could have assumed the role of a PM candidate for the party. If one such leader had been projected as the Congress Party’s PM candidate at the appropriate time the party would not have suffered the humiliating defeat it suffered in the elections.
These tall leaders who could have revived the party at a crucial juncture are now almost as good as retired. These are leaders whose time has now passed and they may never come back into active politics. But if, at the appropriate time, these leaders were assigned a role befitting their capabilities Congress would not have suffered the type of washout it encountered on the political scene.
These leaders may never again come back to rescue the party in the future. If the party has to look ahead it should go hunting for fresh young talent. Rahul can still hold the nominal post of a party president. But hoping for new faces in the Nehru family to provide glamour to the party will only lead the party to its next disaster. Induction of new blood into the party will provide it the only hope for the future. For this, party building efforts will have to start right now.
Unless a new direction is given to the Congress Party, it will soon vanish from the national scene and Modi’s dream of a Congress-Mukt-Bharat will become a reality. Congress considers BJP to be a communal party. If Congress actually believes so, it should provide an alternative. There is a vacuum out there. The dream of ‘achhe-din’ is not going to last forever. There has to emerge some force to fill the communal vacuum. This force could be the revived and revamped Congress Party or it could be the Secular Front of which we talk next.
Before the general election there was the talk of a Third Front which didn’t actually take off. If the Third Front had actually crystallized before the general elections the BJP may never have come to power. We might have most likely seen a Third Front government at the center supported by the Congress Party from outside. All is still not lost for the idea of an alternate front. The vacuum that has been generated on the political front of which we talked about earlier can be filled by a Secular Front. If the smaller non-BJP parties operating in various states unite together to form a Secular Front before the next general elections there is still hope of providing an alternative to the BJP.
As conditions stand today BJP is the dominating force in the Indian political scenario. While this one party domination may be helpful in bringing about reforms in the economic scene it cannot be considered good for a healthy democracy. The BJP could prevent the Congress Party from assuming the role of the principal opposition party in Parliament. But this state of affairs does not augur well for the country’s democratic future. There is also the charge that the BJP is a communalistic party. The need of the hour is therefore to see that a viable opposition emerges to the ruling dispensation at the center. As we saw earlier this alternative could come from a rejuvenated Congress Party or a Secular Front or a combination of both.