Short sightedness is sometimes worst than being not able to see, as it takes away the vision, the bright things which could have been a part of our future. But we mostly tend to be short sighted; after all, we are humane.
Elections are again around the corner & we can see something all across the spectrum: Promises, Promises & more Promises! & We are voters who are humane. We get carried away when someone from our caste is standing from our constituency, irrespective of whether we will ever see him before the next elections. We get influenced if a party promises some extra quota for our community, irrespective of whether they will actually yield benefits on the ground. Then we at times get so frustrated for being promised and then ignored that we decide not to vote for anybody. But then if we need to vote again, we would prefer to vote for candidate who is from our religion and the party which promises our community the moon, even if they have been doing it for the past 5 terms! We don’t care if they are corrupt and criminals as long as they are from same caste.
It is this tendency which has been exploited by various parties to keep us engaged for over six decades now. It has been now 65 years to be precise. Different parties have ruled, some at centre, some at states. The quota has been prevalent for the under privileged sections. Endless promises have been made to the minorities by different parties. Dreams have been sold to the majority masses as well to create a paradise for them on earth. But do we see the masses having got benefit of all which was planned and promised to them. I am sure irrespective of our background & political affiliations; we all would be unanimous in our response to this query. Because if the backward sections had derived the benefits of these schemes, today they would have been at par with the advanced sections in society and we would have been discussing to phase out the quota politics rather than sustaining/increasing those numbers. The political Diaspora is well versed with this fact. It is this primary reason that instead of showcasing their development efforts in their report card, they focus on getting the “appropriate” candidate who the major chunk of constituency would relate to and then show them same old wine of promises in a new bottle. The problem is the ones who talk about development; even they do their caste calculations & constituency profiling to get on the winning side. But the bigger problem is; that it actually works!
Though the picture is not totally grim, as in the last decade we have some definite examples where masses have rewarded the development efforts of our leaders. Sheila Dixit was voted back to power for the third time in 2008, thanks to the development efforts she has made to create a Delhi which seems almost a model state as compared to its peers. Narendra Modi would wish if he could erase the dark pages in Gujarat’s history witnessed around a decade back which is used by opposition to run him down. Because apart from it, he has written such a glorious development chapter for the state that he was not only voted back in 2007 but also has been lately hinted being the party’s nominee for the PM’s post at centre. Then the most recent has been the case of the politician who has turned around the fate of India’s one of the most backward state. The state in question is Bihar and the leader being referred is Nitish Kumar. He has redefined the definition of development in the state of Bihar known to vote only for the caste, promises & stage drama! But the thumping victory for Nitish in last year’s polls has highlighted a very important aspect of Indian democracy: That we also vote for Development and if we get people who work for us, we would go all out to extend our support to them without getting into the dream world of promises. Anti-incumbency is a reflection of poor performance, but then the ruling party is aware & hopeful while moving out that it will again get a chance next time as the opposition gaining power will not be able to deliver on bloated promises. Hence it starts preparing for better & bigger promises with better target strategy in terms of profiling of masses for the next elections! Thus non-performance gives a chance to all rather than better performance!
We all would collectively pray for a day when we would see a minority voter choosing the Saffron candidate who has transformed his constituency for a better life for his family. We would be glad to see the right wing hardliner family voting for a non Saffron government which has worked wonders for their state, their constituency, their neighborhood. Let us all country men get together and start exercising our voting rights more judiciously. Let us promise ourselves; not voting is not the way out. We need to vote & make our vote count. Aam aadmi needs to vote for the future of the Aam aadmi. Lets get our message straight to our leaders: kindly PERFORM! Let us all “Humane” get over the politics of caste & creed and start voting for the politics of Development to set the precedence for our leaders to work for us. Probably our future would be brighter, one where leaders would compete to outdo each other for developing our society, our NATION. Jai Hind!
