Is India heading for bipolar politics?

BY: RANBIR MANHAS PUBLISHED ON MARCH 4, 2018

While commenting on the outcome of election results in three states of North East, people have been predicting that India was heading towards two party electoral politics. But, despite being a protagonist of bipolar politics, I do not accept this logic because their opinion perhaps is based on the outcome of Tripura only where BJP has come up with a massive public mandate. Certainly, beginning with mere less than two percent vote share in last elections, this time, BJP’s vote share has gone up to nearly 50%. However, when we look towards Meghalaya and Nagaland, the picture is different. Although BJP has also considerably increased its vote bank in Nagaland, it has bitterly lost to Congress in Meghalaya meaning thereby that BJP’ claim of making the North Eastern states as Congress free is far from being true. Despite all this, BJP has every moral right to celebrate this victory which both Congress as well the Leftists must humbly admit with the resolve that they will sincerely make a serious introspection of this defeat and try to devise fresh policy to strengthen and mobilize their respective organizational set up by learning lesson from BJP instead of blaming it for using money power, a phenomenon which in fact is going on in India for past so many decades.

Many believe various scandals during Congress rule to be behind it’s constantly slipping down, but I think there are many other political reasons also behind it. Tell me had people been so worried and concerned about scams; then they would not have given majority of seats to Lalu Yadav in Bihar Assembly polls last time after his conviction in Chara Scam! The reasons behind BJP gaining foothold in the country are more political than scams done whether in the past or in the present.

Firstly, whereas Congress and the Leftists have failed to produce dynamic leaders like Indira Gandhi and Jyoti Basu, BJP’s leadership is not only vibrant but its organizational capability is also considerably strong. People by now have begun realizing that Rahul Gandhi whom whole of the opposition has been projecting as its joint Prime ministerial candidate is no match to Narinder Modi.

Secondly, Congress and the Leftists instead of following their progressive policies adopted a divisive policy thereby separating Sikhs from Hindus; Dalits from Brehmins and Rajputs;Muslims from Hindus and so on and they did it for vote bank politics and not for the benefit or emancipation of Dalits and the minorities.

But their most suicidal policy had been their demonization of BJP as anti Muslim and pro Hindu party which in fact made things very smooth for BJP in a country where Hindus comprise above 80% of the total population. Someone has rightly said that a lie said ten times becomes truth and imagine how strong this lie could become true when said for tens of decades?

Another thing that broke the myth created by the so called secular parties about BJP being an anti Muslim party is the 15 years peaceful rule of Modi led government in Gujrat where dozens of communal rites would take place annually during Congress rule the self styled champion of secularism. Even in UP where the so called secularists demonized Yogi as a rabid RSS follower, the cases of communal rights have been minimal during his rule of past one year.

Yet another front on which our so called progressive parties have failed is the reformative social policies like banning of Triple Talaq and econonomic policies like demonetization and GST which should have been their agenda was not only not supported, were badly opposed by them. Now see, these steps have begun giving the dividend and phenomenal increase in country’s GDP and BJP’s deepening inroads in librated Muslims is a proof of that.

Therefore if at all the so called secular and progressive parties have to survive, they will have to unite, come out of their self made deceptive shell of secularism and progressivism, understand the public mood and change their leadership to at least give a positive alternative to the Indian politics, which is otherwise gradually heading towards China like single party system.