“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
More so in the Indian context as we saw in the previous parliaments. A left block with 10% of the total seats used to dictate the government’s economic and foreign policies. Blocks of Mamatas Mayawatis and Jayalalithas with blocks of 5% seats used to give sleepless nights to the government. Hopefully not this time, and thats a good note to start with.
The Pros
The best outcome of elections 2009 is that the influence of the so called regional parties is vanished at the centre. The nation is uniting by leaning towards one or the other side of the national parties (Congress or BJP), atleast to a large extent. This is a good sign in itself for a nation of one billion which hopes to become the leader of the 21st century.
But whats even more better is the eradication of the so called left parties from the mainstream central politics. A strong presence of left in the parliament would have meant India probably would play a subordinate to China. Now with the left thrown out of its 30 year stronghold (and almost the only major stronghold) of West Bengal this fear is gone. India will probably never be a communist country nor will communism have any major role to play in India anymore. This thanks to the sustained campaign against left by Trinamool’s Mamatha Banerjee.
The other greatest fear was Mayawati sweeping Uttar Pradesh which could have probably gave her the biggest bargaining capacity and with a sizeable third front she would have well demanded to become the prime minister with the external support of Congress or BJP, most probably BJP since in that case Congress would have preferred to sit in the opposition. This was the worst nightmare scenario in which case India would have to forget 21st century. Entire country would have become a maya bastion with all Mahatma Gandhi Roads being renamed as Mayawati and KanshiRam roads, and Mahatma Gandhi statues being replaced with Mayawati statues. One can understand what I mean if one visits Uttar Pradesh today where Maya is in power busy building her statues everywhere. Thanks to the great UP voter who finally realised that Mayas and Mulayams are not going to help and hence returned back to the national parties of Congress and BJP. Even though not complete, the start is good. And if Rahul succeeds and sustains his campaign in UP against Mayas and Mulayams, then it is all set to come back to power in Uttar Pradesh in the next assembly elections. Rahul just needs to take a clue from Mamatha Bannerjee.
Given the present global and national economic conditions, the fear of Taliban taking over Pakistan, the Obama policies in US, etc the last thing India wanted is a fractured mandate. Thanks to the intelligent Indian voter (or probably thanks to those who didnt come out and vote) India has a stable government for the next five years with existing economic policies to continue.
Yet another great outcome of these elections is the complete freedom Mr. Manmohan Singh would have now to carry out economic reforms in full swing. Inspite of being the man who started economic reforms in India as the finance minister during P.V.Narasimha Rao’s term who opened the global economic door, Mr.Singh was unable to carry on these reforms in his previous term because of the UPA’s dependency on the support of the left front. Now that there is no left baggage left on his government, Mr.Singh can restart the much needed economic reforms and bring out the true economist in him. There are a lot of public sectors which are to be done away with and where competition needs to brought in.
One of the best things of these elections is that almost half of the elected members are less than 60 years of age, over 40% of the elected members are less than 50, and a lot of them are really really young. Muhammed H Sayeed of Congress is just 26 years old! The ones like Sachin Pilot, Sandeep Dikshit, Jitin Prasada, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora, Varun Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor are all young energetic and dynamic. Given greater responsibilities India can certainly hope a good output atleast from some of them. There is no need for these young MPs to get involved in corruption as it would be real silly to go after money when they already have so much of it.
The Lalus Mulayams and Devegowdas will have little chance of encashing their few seats by bargaining with the government and thats because they simply dont have that many seats anymore. Its great that the voters outrightly rejected the likes of Vaikos and Paswans.
Thanks to Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, Raman Singh and Modi, people have shown that good governance always pays off.
Indian voter also has show his maturity by giving positive vote for good governance for Nitish in Bihar, Naveen Patnaik in Orissa, Narendra Modi in Gujarat, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, Shivraj Singh in Madhya Pradesh etc. It is interesting to note that in these states people have not backed congress which means good governance always pays off and its not impossible to comeback for a second consecutive term if you have delivered in the first. At the same time people have also clipped the wings of Mayawati, Left parties especially the Karats, Lalu, Ramvilas Paswan, Mulayam etc. To summarize the Indian voter has shown his maturity.
The Cons
The Indo-US Nuclear deal will be put into place in full swing, and please watch out for corruption and scams by interested parties here. There is a lot of money at stake here for both US and Indian companies and political groups. Given the size of the deal, this could turn out to be one of the biggest scams in Indian history. Now it is up to Mr.Singh to ensure that it does not happen. But can he?
Forget Quattrochi, he’s gone with all the money and there is no more the interpol red corner notice against him. Bofors is a closed chapter. One of the last steps of the previous government was to inform Interpol via CBI that Quattrochi is no more wanted by India, and thereby ensure that the red corner alert against Quattrochi was removed! Probably that was just in case the UPA does not come back to power. Interestingly even one of the first things that UPA did when it came to power in 2004 was to allow Quattrochi to take away all his money (3 million pounds) that laid frozen in the UK bank accounts by giving a NOC. Mr.Quattrochi’s money was frozen earlier in 2003 based on a request by the Indian government which then had suspected it to be the illegal amount that was part of Bofors bribery scandal. What is more interesting here is that within 24 hours of India informing the UK banks about having no objection, the money was withdrawn by Mr.Quattrochi and gone just before the Indian Supreme Court stepped in to ask the government not to do so!
Are more scams in the waiting? Hopefully not, but hope is all but just a hope, especially when we are talking about politicians.
Forget the billions and billions of money in whatever currency stacked up in the swiss banks by the corrupt politicians, bureacrats and others in India. Nothing is going to happen about it. Government has no interest or probably has vested interest in not bringing that money back unless and until somebody like Ram Jethmalani sustains his fight to expose the Indian corruption locked in swiss accounts.
Unless and until the government takes stern action against extremism sponsored in the neighborhood, terrorist attacks are bound to continue and increase in the country. What prevents a terrorist from attacking India when he knows very well that even if he gets caught he will still be alive and there will be a lawyer to fight for him inspite of all the live evidences like in the case of Kasab, and even if the apex court of the country awards him a death sentence he will still continue to live for years like in the case of Afzal Guru. India definitely needs another Sardar Vallabhabhai Patel at this juncture.
The Challenges
India would probably need another economic stimulus package to keep away the impact of global economic recession. As of now the recession has not really had a measurable impact on the Indian economy.
Increase in public spending and investment in infrastructure building should shield India away from the economic downturn. Given the costs have come down across the globe, this would be the best time to invest heavily on infrastructure building in the country.
One of the good things that the UPA government did was waiving off the farmer’s loans and is also one of the reasons which brought them back to power making Mr.Manmohan Singh the only prime minister of India after Nehru to have returned back to power after completing a full five year term. India is predominantly an agricultural country, and being a country with a billion people home to one fifth of humanity it is very important that India retains its ability to feed its population without any external dependency. No matter how much software or nanos we develop, the success of India will always depend on whether we have adequate food available to feed our hunger or not. The last thing India can afford to do is to discourage farmers and agriculture. It is also becoming increasingly important that we stop the menace of converting agricultural land into commercial and residential properties.
Obama is trying to do everything he can to ensure employment increases in US, and he is right in trying to prevent companies from misusing US laws and gaining tax concessions and at the same time moving jobs outside US. It is any administrator’s duty to ensure that it is his people who benefit from his government’s policies.
At the same time Obama should also understand very clearly that his jurisdiction is limited to the boundaries of United States and not to the entire world. He should stop asking India, Israel and Pakistan to sign the crap like CTBT and NPT. Will he agree if India asks US to dump all its nuclear weapons? First let Mr.Obama concentrate on cooperating with Russia on the START treaty and eliminating thousands of nukes which have the capacity to destroy the entire Earth n number of times. Why on earth does US need so many nukes? Are they planning to go for intergalactic wars with some aliens?
Also, while US is moving towards protectionism it has no rights to lecture the rest of the world about globalisation. What rights does US have to ask India via WTO to not to give subsidies to Indian farmers? Isnt it the same outsourcing story with India and US switching sides? The same way US wants to protect its employment opportunities by preventing outsourcing, India wants to protect its farmers by giving subsidies to agriculture. How about India showing doors to US MNCs like Coke and Pepsi the same way? So it should be that either US sticks to protectionism and so will all other countries, else US implements true globalisation and so will all other countries.
Now that Mr.Manmohan Singh is back, he should be more assertive on these subjects with US and make US realise that it cannot act as a master of the world. India is already facing enough terrorism because of stupid US policies of cold war era during which CIA supported ISI in pakistan and gave birth to Taliban and Al-Qaeda in our neighborhood. The world would have been a better place to live if US had limited its military expeditions to the North American Continent. Bush created a mess in Iraq and now Obama wants to wash his hands off it without cleaning the mess. And now they want to create a mess in Indian neighborhood.
Coming back to the terrorist attacks on India, there were more 26/11 style attacks expected to take place during the election period. But that did not happen because of two reasons, one being the preventive measures taken by the home ministry led by Mr.Chidamabaram which did a real good job in terms of couner-terrorism intelligence, and the second but more important one being the unwillingness of the pakistan based terrorist groups to take the risk of creating a pro-BJP wave that would have been created in case of yet another terrorist attack during the election season.
But now that the elections are over, and that the UPA is back in power, the Pakistan based jehadis would be again targetting India since they want to move the US attention away from Taliban and Al-Qaeda to a possible Indo-Pak confrontation. Even the terrorists would be willing to take the risk because they know what has happened to Afzal Guru and Kasab. Afzal Guru is still living his full life inspite of Indian supreme court ordering a death sentence to him, and Kasab is having a great life by making a mockery of the Indian legal system by demanding things like deodarants, newspapers etc inspite of having killed so many innocent civilians and is being treated like VIP with bullet proof, bomb proof protection, government spending almost 30 Lakh on the lawyer defending him, etc.
To summarize, the worst thing that could have happened in these elections was a fractured mandate where Mayawati or Lalloo or Left would have emerged as king makers or kings themselves. That did not happen and India is all set to move ahead in full swing provided it has some nerves to tackle the menace of terrorism and send a strong message to the terrorists.
