The stonewalling continues unabated and unabashedly too. Like a bunch of crabs at the bottom of a pit, everyone seems to be keen on pulling down the other, oblivious to the fact that it is the nation and its credibility that is ultimately being plunged into the depths. There is no positive agenda, no constructive design, not even a modicum of principle in the scuffle for political spoils that is on display.
The country’s top slot is literally up for grabs and is being sought to be filled up by a despicable process of elimination and trial and error, characterised by abject negativism and downright lack of propriety. Little wonder that the next PM of the land would be either from a single digit party or a two digit outfit, that may even fall woefully short of a quorum in Parliament. All this to save an imaginary damsel called secularism, no matter if real ones like democracy and decorum get raped.
With our politicians behaving like a bunch of spoilt children quarelling over a piece of toffee, hopes of any sane governance have all but vanished. Whatever the new formation and whosoever its constituents, the next dispensation is certain to bring utmost turmoil to the nation, for the simple reason that the flow of power and authority is only going to aggravate the already yawning differences amongst the partners.
It is indeed quite disconcerting to think that the nation’s troubles have not yet peaked and the worst is yet to come, but that seems to be the scorching reality if current political trends are any indication.
The very prospect of a re-run of the Third Front circus causes butterflies in the stomach. Well, frankly, with due credit to the protagonists of such an alternative, we do agree that it is extremely easy and eminently in the realm of possibilities to revive the Third Front.
Neither a magic wand nor even a sizzling cup of Nescafe is necessary to make it come alive; it just grows like the weed on its own, watered by none, in any vacuum that has just been created. But what is really difficult is to keep it alive, even clinically if not kicking, because such Third Fronts have always displayed high suicidal tendencies and are frequently susceptible to gravitational pulls. They keep falling, too often that even an Isaac Newton would have preferred these samples to apples as exhibits.
If the BJP government was born with a hole in the heart and a foot in the grave, the new dispensation on the above mentioned lines is unlikely to have a heart in the first place not to speak of an underdeveloped brain and will be born in the grave itself dug in advance by its own constituents.
Frankly, not one of the harassed citizens of this country would bat an eyelid if any of the current tribe of politicians or their parties or fronts happen to fall in the pit or grave of political oblivion. But then so much is still dependent on politics that they would take the nation and its people too, into the abyss alongwith them.
Unlike, several equally unstable countries in the west, India is yet to gain total freedom from politics. The Indian economy is still to become immune to the political theatrics as is evident from the bloodbath at the bourses during the past few weeks. The business community is yet to be completely freed from the shackles of bureaucratic controls and political interference and preferences in matters of policy despite the fact of the liberalisation process being almost eight years old now.
Even during this period, economic reforms cannot be said to have had a smooth ride although, thankfully, the direction has been right. A stable government, some government, is of utmost necessity even if it consists of unstable politicians for we have little to choose from. But if it is the Third Front that emerges as the only option from the very fractured LS, then one may as well kiss economic revival goodbye.
The spirits get all the more dampened at the prospect of a Left-led front at the Centre. Much of the country’s woes can be placed at the doorsteps of the red-lettered intellectuals of the Left who have been swinging like a pendulum from blind anti-Congressism in the past to a ‘more loyal than the King’ syndrome of the present.
To hand over the reins of the nation to them is akin to inviting disaster through the front door. For one, the fossils of the Left are yet to be updated on several developments on the technological and economic front, not to speak of the redundance of all their theories and surmises.
And it is unlikely that a stint at office would enlighten them about global economic trends and domestic ground realities, even if they are willing which they are not. They languish in a world of their own, a sort of devil’s workshop consisting of idle minds like you know who, and come to life with all their destructive vigour whenever confusion and chaos grip the nation.
They are then in their elements because they themselves are a very confused lot, still unable to fathom what went wrong in Russia or how and why China crossed the rubicon of a socialist economic policy. To let loose these characters into the portals of power for them to unleash their antiquated ideologies on an unsuspectig economy would be tantamount to walking into a gas chamber.
The eagerness of the ‘secular’ forces to cobble up some government to fill the vacuum is quite understandable. It is their conscientious obligation to the nation and also in their own enlightened self-interest that, having pulled down a government another one be formed without delay. But enough time has already elapsed which already seems like leap years and all hopes of a viable alternative with any of the bigger parties at the helm emerging have been dashed, thanks to the aforementioned crab-psychology.
Popping up doomed third fronts and then propping them up on daily wages may not be the right solution to the imbroglio, though it sounds simplistic and plausible too, in the current atmosphere of apprehensions and desperation. Politicians can feel free to look at all angles but the economy can ill afford to shift to reverse gear at this juncture, which is what a Left dispensation portends.
A visit to the voter is perhaps the only way out, unless a few horses exclude that option by choosing to switch stables, from communal to secular or vice-versa.
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