Indian Politics – Promises and Lies

The Indian General Elections are taking place across the month of April and May 2009. 552 candidates will make it to the Lower House or the LokSabha of the Indian Parliament. This is the 15th time that Indians are electing their representatives in the past 60 years. The Lok Sabha is elected for a term of 5 years and has a representative from each district of India. The Indian General Elections are always interesting because of the innumerable candidates fighting it out for a seat representing uncountable political parties.

Basically there are two big political parties who are the main contestants of the elections, the Indian National Congress (INC) or the Congress-I and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). There are many spin offs of these two major parties and that’s how there are many smaller political parties which play major roles in these elections. Not to forget a third not-so-big party called the Communist Party of India (CPI) but plays the biggest role in case of a coalition government.

As I was talking about “Drama in Real Life” during the Lok Sabha elections, I was actually talking about the entertaining debates and cross talks between political leaders during the heat of the elections. Every leader is eventually making fool of the common man. Before the elections, there is a lot of blame game and dirty word wars played between so called leaders of India. After the elections, everyone forgets about the blame game and the word war and start lobbying for coalitions to get a majority in the house to form the Government. Oh! Yes, coalition is an essential result of the Indian General Elections because of one basic reason. There are so many political parties in India that no one party can get a clear majority in the Lok Sabha Elections to form a government of their own. And when we talk about small spin off parties, we talk about the selfish and self centered character of the Indian Politician by large. If someone has been a member of a big party for say 10 years but he could not perform or win a place in the cabinet or ministers, the next day he forms a political party of his own and eats up 4 or 5 seats from the next elections. Hence, if there are 10 major spin offs, then they eat up around 50 odd seats from the Lok Sabha. Now to form a government, a party has to get a clear 272 seats, if I am not wrong. So if the smaller parties eat up 50 seats from the 552 seats of the parliament, no other party gets a clear majority, because the INC and the BJP every time almost clear the majority mark. So now, they have to turn to smaller parties to add up to a majority. Enter lobbying and money laundering. “Ministers for Sale”, that’s the virtual board that the smaller parties hang around their winners. Lo and behold! Suddenly, the party with the minimum seats becomes the King Maker. That means for example, a small party has won around 7 seats. Now the bigger party just needs 6 more seats in their support to reach to the majority mark. This is a situation where smaller parties play big games. I have not seen whether the seats are bought with cash or kind but it is a common phenomena and practice that the smaller party will bargain on ministerial portfolios with the bigger party. That means that the candidates that the people of India select, are actually governed by some meager 5 seater political party.

All types of people become candidates to the elections. There are candidates who have criminal records to their fullest but they are allowed to contest the elections. Millions of currency is spent during elections for campaigning. All this money is actually the taxes paid by an Indian during his entire work career.

People of India are either not willing to understand that it is their money which is getting wasted by the government during elections.

Big talks about reforms, long term development plans, promises of eradicating terrorism, employment, poverty, etc. fail after the elections. It has been observed that the voting percentage of all the parts of India has come is close to 50%. This means that most of the people who are eligible to vote, do not cast their votes. And who will they cast their votes to? To candidates who make false promises or the candidates of the break-off faction? There is a mindset of an Indian voter that whoever they elect will not do any good for the local people. This notion is somewhat true because most of the candidates after getting elected, do not even attend the parliamentary sessions. There are candidates who do not even belong to their constituency. There are candidates who present themselves as the contender to the prime ministerial throne but they can’t give a simple speech by not looking at a pre-written piece of paper.

At the end of the day, no one realizes the common man’s plight and the daily insecurity that they go through. The one who elects the candidate is forgotten for the next 5 years. Hence, there is fall in the voting percentage. Which political party wins, who becomes the Prime Minister and whosoever forms the coalition, the common man has nothing to do with it. He only wants a couple of bread every day…

Linus Orakles
http://www.authorclub.info/