An Appeal To The Indian Voter

Winston Churchill, a nasty excuse of a human being, was good for one thing: clever one-liners. He said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. It does make sense in a number of ways. We deserve the government we elect. If Manmohan Singh is not being a good PM, we are responsible because we put him there. He is not doing anything different than he did in the first term but we were too blinded by his honest guy persona that not only did we elect him but with a larger margin than before. Serves us right. Of course I did not vote for him but I am a voter and thus have to accept a collective responsibility for this debacle.

What is wrong with our polity and voters? That warrants some examination before we can come up with a solution. Our nation is divided in more ways that it is united. In the true spirit of “all politics is local”, we only look at regional issues. There is nothing wrong with that. After all, a region is a subset of the nation. However, even our regional issues get divided based on issues like caste and religion. Problem with that is that issues like that empower incapable leaders who are nothing more than corrupt demagogues. A voter in UP said in an interview that we give our daughters and votes to fellow caste members! Wow! This is the voter that bastard Churchill was talking about. But why stop there. Let us examine other parts of the nation. The Karnataka CM is in the seat because he belongs to the Lingayat community. He is a reasonable leader but that seems to be incidental. Why does J&K CM’s seat belong to one family? Karunanidhi is ruling Tamilnadu because of free televisions. How come Mayawati continues to rule UP despite of running a roughshod over every citizen of that unfortunate state? Look at West Bengal. A casual conversation with even a cab driver will tell you how aware the Bengali voter is and yet they kept on choosing the Communists year after year while the once prosperous state was getting destroyed from inside out. From all the indications, now they are going to kick the communists out and bring in Maoist backed Mamta Bannerjee / Congress combine. They are going from pseudo-secular communists to pseudo-secular socialists. From the pan into the fire is what they are doing. Look at Kerala where the voters are the most educated in the entire nation and yet they keep electing one non-performing government after another. You will say those are state elections and thus inconsequential by and large to the national polity. The problem is that the representatives of regional parties at the center have the same mindset and use their leverage to treat the central government as an ATM machine.

There is a common thread running through all this. No one is thinking about the nation as a whole. By electing the small regional parties who have no national interests we give these leaders a leverage over the central government which eventually translates into bribes and other financial crimes. IN UPA1, when the Communists withdrew their support, the Congress bribed smaller parties and ensured that the government's survival. We are seeing the same machinations in UPA2 with DMK and other such parties.

So what is the solution to all this. Well, the American style two party rule is a very good solution. However, given the power that regional parties now have, that is not going to happen unless there are laws about it. I think that all the regional parties should have to declare their allegiance to a national party before the elections. After the elections they should not be allowed to change their alliances. I suppose that is what the idea was behind the UPA and NDA. Unfortunately ways have been found to get around to that practice as well. To keep the BJP out of power, the pseudo-secular groups resort to tricks like abstaining from the vote or issue based outside support or the old “moral support”. Problem is that any system is as good as the people following it and any law is as strong as the conscience of the people. That our politicians have no conscience or decency is no news to anyone.

So it all comes down to the voter. We as voters need to think at the regional and national level. If we think that the regional party is going to be the better option for our home state then we should vote them in the state elections. However, in a national election, we should vote for one of the two national parties. If we do not do that then we have a serious dilemma on our hands. In the last election, the Congress had less than 30% of the total votes and yet they are ruling the nation. The corollary to that statement is that more than 70% people did not want the Congress at the center. So Manmohan Singh is representing a minority of the Indian voters and thus has been thrust upon the rest of us. That very realization should make us doubt the way Indian democracy functions.
The politicians will remain who they are and that is the nature of the beast. It is up to us, the voters, to change all that.