Yes To Gandhi-free Congress. No To Congress-free India.

Congress lost the general elections in a big way. Since then every election they have contested even in their areas have resulted in bog losses. Their projected performance the recent Delhi elections have to alarm the most loyal lapdogs of the Gandhi family. That Congress is imploding will be an understatement. We have written many articles on the perils of dynastic rules. We expected that things will go bad for Congress. We took great pleasure in their losses and rightly so. That party has done more damage to the nation than any elected party in any democracy. But their current state is worrisome to any Indian who is concerned about the state of Indian democracy.

The way Modi-Shah combine is working, it is clear that the BJP will become a true blue national party with presence in every state. They are not depending on “friendly regional parties” as did LK Advani and his ilk. That is really good for the health of Indian democracy. After all, parties with regional aspirations with focused agendas are detrimental to a balanced administration because they tend to use their spoiler status to squeeze undeserved funds to run their populist agendas. Central government gets reduced to the status of an ATM in the hands of regional mandarins. So in that regards, a strong BJP presence in any state offers the voters a viable alternative especially if the state BJP has strong and capable local leaders.

Congress was that party. Once upon a time they had a presence in all the states. Their ground level organization was strong and the workers loyal. It was all because the leadership which may have been corrupt and misguided (read socialists) but they were consummate politicians with reasonable to good intellect. After India Gandhi, the rot began because she would not let any other leader come up. It became a family dynasty. After Rajiv Gandhi, the party had a bit of respite and they had their most capable leader since LB Shastri. PVN Rao did wonders for the Indian economy. But the Gandhi family loyalists could not leave well enough alone. We all know what happened after that. Even today, no one is ready to put the blame at the feet of Sonia Gandhi. It is like the Harry Potter series of novels where no one took the name of Voldemort. It is the story of the king without the clothes-no one has the guts to say that she is truly incapable intellectually and every other way to head anything except maybe a household where the major decision is what is for dinner. After the party stands in ruins, people have gathered some guts and have started to question Rahul Gandhi’s decisions when it is Sonia all along. Congress is getting destroyed and they are still not ready to question Sonia Gandhi. If they do not get rid of the mother-son duo, there will not be any party left.

Their faithful in the media have already abandoned them and are already referring to Arvind Kejriwal as the national alternative to BJP. Which maybe be fine except we know that while Arvind Kejriwal may have the intellect and some political survival skills, he is not an administrator. He has not governed any organization let alone lead a national party. Even if and that is a HUGE if, he can somehow run Delhi, it is going to take him ages to become a national party. The BJP in its current avatar took close to 15 years to become a force on the national scene and this when they already had strong roots and Janasangh, backed by the RSS. How the hell can AAP become a national alternative?
What will happen is that BJP will become the only national party and they will be challenged by the regional satraps. That will suit the nation well as long as the BJP wins with comfortable majority. However, if the BJP does not get the majority they how can India expect a strong central government. We will start having elections every other year. We will be reduced to a big banana republic.

We all know that for a healthy democracy we need a strong opposition. That has to be Congress if BJP is in power and vice versa. It cannot be some ego driven rabble rouser or a family dynasty. It has to a viable national party. In the current state, the nation needs Congress. As much as I love Narendra Bhai, I cannot abide with his “Congress Mukt Bharat” campaign. What I would like to see is “Gandhi family mukt Congress”.

We need a strong Congress and BJP to provide India with a two party system and that will never happen as long as Sonia Gandhi and her yes-men are in charge. My appeal to the responsible leaders of Congress is that please, for the nation’s sake, see the light, call the spade a spade and get rid of Sonia, her son and her daughter. They are toxic and are destroying the party and in turn making the Indian democracy weak.

Will that happen? I don’t know. The Gandhi family loyalists have either gotten rid of anyone with any brains or emasculated them. Until that happens, I can hope and pray that Narendra Modi continues to occupy the PM’s chair. God forbid if he loses then that vacuum will be filled by the likes of Kejriwal or Mamata Bannerjee. Are you comfortable with that thought?

The Implications Of Delhi Elections

The Delhi elections are done. The results are not out yet but for the most part it is not important because the implications for the major players is quite clear.

For BJP it is quite clear that this will be Modi’s first loss after an extremely long time (even if the BJP miraculously wins the implications remain the same). The media made this election into a referendum against Modi as if wins in other states and a large number of seats in J&K were meaningless. But it is quite clear that the dysfunction in Delhi BJP ran too deep for Modi to do anything about. Delhi is that kind of city where power and money run amok and it affects everyone. The Delhi BJP cadre is as corrupt as everyone else. Last election when the BJP became the largest party, it had projected Dr. Harshvardhan who is that rare clean Delhi insider and he overcame the dysfunction. This time Kiran Bedi who is clean but an outsider which made it well near impossible for her to overcome Delhi BJP problems.

Delhi is a glorified municipality with no bearing on the workings of the central government. A loss here will not translate into losses in important upcoming elections in Bihar, WB and UP (now those are important states where losses will mean loss of control in Rajyasabha). Congress always did well in Delhi which never translated into wins anywhere else. But there is a clear message for Modi and Shah. Indian voters (like voters everywhere) are fickle and they want tangible and visible results. Clearly all of Modi’s decisions and work has not translated into visible results. That it has been less than a year to clean of 65 years of rot does not earn you any respite from the voters. Clearly the price control in commodities was not sold to the voters effectively. Therefore in the upcoming elections, effective communication with the voters without offering them freebies. This means discovering campaigners other than Modi.

For AAP implications could not be more important. Even if due to some extreme bad luck they lose or get lesser than expected number of seats, they have established themselves as players to be reckoned with. More importantly, everyone who hates Modi (that is a larger number) is going to rally behind AAP. They will get a disproportionate amount of press and their fundraising capabilities are going to skyrocket. Kejriwal has now become the Goliath slayer, the common man who took on big bad Modi and bested him. He will now become the shoulder upon which leftists, liberals and media mavens will fire their guns from. After the last elections he had earned monikers like AK49 or “bhagoda”. Now he will be called CM again. This time around he will not quit. We all have an idea how he will perform (especially with those large number of promised freebies) but to go into that at the time of his victory will be churlish. We should let him and the entire anti-Modi brigade enjoy this huge victory thanks to the wise voters of Delhi. Kejriwal has now become relevant again and he already is being projected by the great leftist blowhard Rajdeep Sardesai (he also has become relevant by proxy) as Congress’ alternative on the national level.

For Congress the implications are dire. So dire that they merit a blogspot of its own.

For India, the implications are not good. We are back to being a fractured democracy instead of a solid two party system. Again, thank you voters of Delhi. The implications will be discussed along with the implications for Congress.