Demystifying the oddball situation of India voting for a political party twice and then protesting against it

 

As the protests in India over the controversial amendment of it’s Constitution which paves the way for persecution of Muslims and polarization of Indian society intensifies, the rage against the government has spilled over into its complete disregard about the woeful economic condition of the country. To spend millions on a population indexing exercise with an ulterior motive when the inflation, unemployment and agrarian distress levels have peaked and GDP is realistically touching the floor at 0% is no longer something that people are ready to look away from. But the question is, wasn’t this the same government that was re-elected for a 2nd term just 6 months back? Hasn’t BJP, the political face of RSS always had a Hindu majoritarian agenda? Hasn’t the RSS always had scant respect for India’s Constitution and national flag? Wasn’t RSS banned after Gandhi was assassinated? Then how is the political front of an anti-national organization at the helm of affairs of the country now? I see 3 reasons.

1. Hindutva ideology, the creation of RSS has an important aspect to it. Fear mongering about Hinduism being in danger from other religions and specifically from Islam. The roots of this go back to the time when Muslim kings invaded India, committed atrocities against Hindus and destroyed Hindu monuments. Fear mongering is about what Muslims did in the past could happen to Hindus again in the present and future. By doing this, RSS is trying to impose themselves as the protectors of Hindus. This indoctrination is what is going on at RSS shakhas, where young Hindus get brainwashed with the Hindutva ideology which in turn has established a sizable vote bank for the BJP. There are supposedly Hindu communities that believe in this fear mongering so much that as long as Hindu interests are taken care of, they don’t even mind an economic collapse in the country.

2. Modi’s only claim to fame was overseeing the brutal violence and butchering of people at Godhra as the CM of Gujarat in 2002. Little else was known about him other than the fact that he won the state assembly elections repeatedly. In the 2012-13 period, he suddenly exploded on the national scene with the Gujarat model of development and as the best man to be the PM of the country. Little did the country know that from being born in a poor lower caste family to being a tea seller in a railway station, every aspect of Modi’s persona was carefully and strategically constructed to appeal to the lowest classes of Indian society which is also the largest chunk of voters.

But my dad and I saw through the deception in 2014 itself. A message on social media with the picture of a bus station in Gujarat grabbed eyeballs, but we quickly realized that the picture was that of a bus station in China. When the picture of the bus station in Gujarat was available, why would they try to pass off the picture of the bus station in China as the one in Gujarat? It was an innocuous lie but a lie nevertheless. If whatever was being projected through mainstream and social media about Modi and the Gujarat model of development was true, why would they want to lie about a mere bus station? That was a red flag which we saw but most of India didn’t. A low caste tea seller becoming the PM was the fantasy story sold to the country with the tagline anything is possible with Modi which enamored the country, especially the lower caste people. A simple fact that most people seems to have overlooked is, Modi comes from a north Indian patriarchal society so deep rooted that he may have never made of cup of tea for himself as cooking is considered women’s job.

Compare this with what has happened in Delhi in the last 5 years. The AAP government put its entire focus on education and healthcare and on providing two of the most essential commodities for the people – electricity and water. Complete neglect of the capital city for the last 70 years by elected governments and civil administration has left it in appalling condition. The AAP government is not even claiming 100% success in any of the areas it has worked on. In fact, what’s left to be done literally dwarfs what they have done. Delhi’s CM, Arvind Kejriwal, though the face of AAP is not even being remotely projected in the same vein as Modi, who was bestowed godly status by being compared with Lord Shiva during 2014 general elections. They have wisely taken videos of Delhi government schools in 2015 when they were in dilapidated condition and how the work they have done has improved the standards of the same schools in 2019.

3) Electoral voters are of 3 categories – 1) Loyal voters 2) Fence sitters and 3) First time voters. Loyal voters will vote for their party of choice regardless of all factors. Election propaganda and campaigning are to woo the votes of fence sitters and first time voters. The accusation that BJP has been tampering with EVMs and fudging election results have flown thick and fast time and again. The counter accusation has been that only when BJP wins elections the accusation of EVM tampering raises it’s head and not when other parties win.

Looks like the general expectation is that when EVMs are tampered with, it will be done on a large scale. This is not an all or nothing situation. India’s political demography has to be understood here first. In general elections, some states being much larger than the rest in terms of area elect a disproportionately larger number of representatives to the Parliament. Incidentally these are the states that are at the bottom when it comes to living standards, education, social factors etc. BJP has won consecutive general elections by winning maximum number of seats from these states. Because of lower education levels bordering on illiteracy and pathetic social conditions, people of these states are completely vulnerable to being indoctrinated by Hindutva ideology and fall for Modi’s persona.

When it comes to EVM tampering, only enough EVMs need to be tampered with to cause the swing of votes of fence sitters and first time voters. Now how can I say so confidently that EVMs are being tampered with? Because many EVMs have been reported from many places wherein no matter which candidate voters voted for, the votes always went to the BJP candidates. But those cases are of single EVMs reported from all over the country and it is spread so far and wide that it is easier for them to be neglected as defective ones. The fact that every one of those defective EVMs voted only for BJP candidates should have raised a red flag, but surprisingly it hasn’t. Moreover, if BJP starts winning every election that would raise a red flag, so its enough to have control at the centre, have their government in some of the states and have substantial presence in the assemblies of the rest of the states. EVM tampering can be a pick and choose strategy which no one is considering.

Be it ballot boxes or EVMs, what makes it possible for electoral results to be manipulated? The political affiliation of loyal voters will be well known as many of them will be actively working for the political parties of their choice and will have no hesitation in publicizing it. But loyal voters are always far less in numbers when compared to the fence sitters which constitutes the largest block of voters. The fence sitters and a small chunk of silent loyal voters will always shy away from revealing whom they voted for. It is their votes that gets targeted for manipulation and they will never know that its by manipulating their votes that the candidate they chose not to vote for got elected. Moreover, in India, since the entire bureaucracy is corrupt from top to bottom, it is easy to replace the EVMs used during the elections with preset ones which will have votes only for particular candidates when the EVMs are shifted out of polling booths after the elections. Again, no large scale replacement will be required to make a candidate win unless the government decides to deceitfully defeat an opposing party which is certain to win.

The entire system of politics and democracy has decayed to rot in India. On one side political parties choose political leaders who will be their candidates in elections effectively deciding who should represent the people. On the other side, election results get tampered with. People have been reduced to political puppets whose only requirement is to vote and then they are relegated to suffering at the hands of political leaders, bureaucracy and civil administration for another 5 years.

Its time for the intellectuals of the country to stand up and take ownership of governance of the country. The word governance represents treating every individual as equal in every aspect and providing equal status and opportunities to all. The biggest factor of the ongoing protests is that it has been started by students, the ones who know what they want and how their future should look like. If they are able to brave all odds and sustain their protests, the era of a new and better India might just be around the corner.

The story of a river, riots and a missed festival

So it was just another day, just another Monday. Today (Wednesday) is the starting day of the most important festival (Onam) in my state (Kerala). All Keralites converge towards their homeland during this time and as I was having my lunch close to the bus stop on Monday on my way home, my dad suddenly called me and in a frantic voice he said that riots have started across Karnataka and the situation is descending into chaos. Soon enough, I got the alert on my phone that the bus has been cancelled. It was a long travel back, but I managed to return to the safety of my rented place in Bangalore. Fast forward to yesterday morning and I stepped out to see if any shops were open. I found one shop with it’s shutters half open so I went in and picked up some stuff. As I was waiting to pay, this tall scrawny kid swaggered into the store and demanded to shut the shop immediately. He looked like one elongated drum stick. It took me a bit to hold back my temptation to ask him to go and eat some food before he starts creating trouble because one good solid blow from a policeman is enough to take his life..

I had wondered for long how a public show of protest goes so quickly out of hand. Then I saw the great migration of wild buffaloes at Masai Mara on TV and then the truth dawned on me. All the buffaloes converge to the river bank where there is a moment of uncertainty. Then one buffalo summons up the courage to get into the water and every other buffalo rushes into the water after the first one. This is called herding mentality and it is present in every species on the planet including human beings. What we need to see here is, neither do the other buffaloes know with what reason or logic did the first buffalo decide to go into the river nor are they applying their own reasoning before throwing themselves into the river. The river is infested with crocodiles who will be waiting eagerly for this time every year and I am quite sure the older buffaloes are aware of this danger but still they decide to go ahead with crossing the river. The objective is to get across to the other side for food and they have accepted some losses as collateral damage. If I draw a parallel here, the same happens during protests and riots as well. Don’t the protesters know that police will be there as well and some of them could get hurt or even get killed? There will be some people to incite the violence and everyone else would pitch in without applying any logic and without considering the danger to their own life. This herding mentality and blind faith in us are keeping two institutions in our society alive and healthy: Religion and Politics.

Erstwhile India (including Pakistan) had been littered with a large number of kingdoms for the longest time in her history. There were many who sought the glory of conquering the entire region but India’s geography and demography is so complex and complicated that none succeeded. The British were the ones who came really close to this with their divide and rule policy. I still do not understand what Indians were looking for when we stood up together and demanded independence from the British. Again the herding mentality comes into the picture here. The First World War had weakened the colonial powers considerably. Some people who foresaw the opportunity to become political leaders and rule the country exhorted the masses to stand up against the British and they duly obliged without even thinking about what they were truly looking for freedom from. The divides in the society that has existed for thousands of years exists even now and discrimination based on caste and religion continues even to this day. The assumption that a land which is so complex geographically and demographically and it’s people who are so diverse culturally could be united and brought under a book called the constitution was probably the biggest mistake that has happened in India. The fallout of this is the primary reason behind the continued flare up of tension between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The most important reasons for the depletion of natural resources are blatant mismanagement and exponential population increase. What is sad is that people are not asking themselves why is rainfall getting lesser and why is there less water in the rivers every year. More people want to build houses every year so more trees have to be cut and more land has to be freed up for construction yet people expect rains to be consistent and rivers to be filled up with water every year. Ridiculous can also be so amazing at times. On both sides of river Cauvery are farm lands and farmers who are trying to grow crops to earn their livelihood. Why is it not possible that they can just keep aside the fact that they belong to two different states and share the water from the river equally? No, because the issue has been politicized and it has been taken out of the hands of the farmers. Now political parties and courts are deciding which side should get how much water. What is truly ironical is that the people who torched vehicles in protest and the guy who came to shut down the shop yesterday may not have even seen the Cauvery river, forget knowing about the ground reality there. Herding mentality visible here again. What I am wondering now is, which is more volatile, a border issue between two countries or the water issue between two states in the same country. The only difference I can see is, people in the two states haven’t started using guns and bombs against each other.

The heartening aspect to me though is how mobs have been destroying vehicles and other infrastructure in the past 2 days which tells me something significant. When it comes to natural resources, people have no value for money or anything related to money. Money has taken over as the fundamental aspect of all divisions in society to the extent that devotees who donate larger sums in temples are allowed to pray longer before the idols of deities. Money has even penetrated the domain of natural resources and we have been selling land and water for a long time now. For the benefit of some people who created the concept of money, the planet and the rest of the people are getting destroyed slowly. I do not know how long all of this will continue and how much destruction will have to happen before we realize our mistakes. Amazingly, all this societal decay and destruction has been very clearly prophesied in ancient Indian texts as Kali Yuga (age of Kali). I just hope this time ends sooner than later and this world gets the opportunity to start over again, preferably without human beings in it.

What do I do now that I have missed my festival? Well, there is a very significant reason why we have festivals. Our lives have been uncertain from the dawn of our existence. When we were hunters and cave dwellers, we did not even know if we would return home alive from hunting or fishing expedition at the end of the day. So we started looking for and making reasons to celebrate with our near and dear ones. Onam is the second harvest season of the year and though harvesting has reduced considerably through time, celebrations are always in full swing every year. I do not need a reason to celebrate life, every moment with my loved ones is nothing less than celebration for me. So I have told my parents that next time I am able to go to meet them that will be the time we celebrate Onam.