Fasgaya – U P Elections and Aftermath.

20 MAR 2017

  The Kashmir Problem- the immediate way forward.

This is essentially a rejoinder to the series of articles released by NDTV on the UP elections and afterwards. They are supposedly written by intellectuals but the logic they use exposes the direction of use of their intelligence completely. As this direction is towards wrongly chosen Super systems, we can call such intellectuality idiotic intellectuality or intellectual idiocy. The intellectuals become idiots by becoming blind to ground realities: This blinding happens when the intelligent people first fix the end and then use their unquestionable intelligence to prove it. Once you fix the end you can prove anything using intelligence especially in a field like politics. In such an eventuality, the higher the intelligence the more idiotic the bases of logic that emanate. Let me explain.

The first ridiculous argument that is put forward is: Even though BJP won more than 80% of seats, about 60% of people voted against it! This reminds me what another intellectual Mr P Chidambaram said when BJP won Gujarat for the third time in a row with the same number of seats – a comfortable majority- that it won in its second win. PC said it was indeed victory for the Congress. Asked how, he said that Congress won because BJP won just the same number of seats but not one more!!!!

The simple thing that such intelligent individuals miss when they put forward such incomprehensible logic to the common man is that we are a democracy and in a democracy the candidate who gets the maximum votes wins. By using the same logic that these intelligentsia use can we also calculate how much % of voters voted against the Congress, the SP, the BSP and the AAP in Goa and Punjab? The simple logic in a democracy is not that the party with rejection %s less than a given figure should not come to power. The simple logic is that candidates and so party with the least rejection % comes to power; there is no upper limit for this least rejection % of popular votes that a party gets.

In a democracy, even going by the %’s of popular vote, it is not that a party should get 51% of popular votes to come to power. Even if we assume for a minute wrongly it is so, the parameter for the % of popular voters who rejected a party should not be (100 minus % vote got by a party) but (51 minus % vote got by a party) to represent how many people or what % of vote the winning party did not get to reach 51% and not to reach 100%. If a party aims at 100 % it can only be the communist China or where no other party except one is allowed to exist. We call it one party dictatorship or one man dictatorship, certainly it is not a democracy. 100% is not the ideal to get to unless you are in a dictatorship, where there is no need at all to get any votes. 51% is the ideal target to get in a democracy. I do not know what blinds intellectuals like Mani shanker Iyer or the others whose articles are published by NDTV from realizing this simple – very simple – logic. Do we want a democracy or dictatorship? Or are these intellectuals suffering from intellectual idiocy or idiotic intelligence?

This intellectual diarrhea spills over uncontrollably (as it is a diarrhea after all) to the analysis of election results also, particularly to the self- analysis by the Congress, if at all you can call it introspection, that has been going on for several years now and over several elections. The introspection by the intelligentsia is a classical example of running away from inconvenient reasons though they may be real, like what Pakistan does in its “war against terrorism.” The introspection process is marked by a total denial of all reasons that matter and leads them to see only the reasons that are convenient first, followed by paralysis of action on the findings. This results in evading the issue or the problem and helps not a bit in resolving the problem. No wonder the Congress party continues to slide in spite of several such introspections.

After all when there are so many “experts”, there are very few leaders! The basic requirement of a party’s win is a leader- not nominated by any party but perceived as a leader by the common people. If someone in the party is perceived as a leader by the people for a short time, we presume that any one whom the party nominates as a leader will always be perceived as one by the people. But the source of power and leadership in a democracy is with the people and the trust the people place in a leader first and the party second. When both these are missing, how can the Congress party ever hope to come to power? Can we calculate the (100% - the vote share of the party) for the Congress in Punjab and also in Goa and Manipur, and apply the logic propounded by the pundits in their NDTV articles? Why does the Congress party boast about these states and on what basis? Should there be one norm for the BJP and some other convenient norm for all the other parties?

The solutions suggested for revitalizing the Congress by these intellectuals is theoretical and laughable to say the least. The steps they suggest will make BJP stronger! The first of them is re-structuring. This is what I, as a management consultant have seen: The managements of failing organizations do restructuring before they close down. Whereas the problem is with the end namely a trustworthy leader and a trust worthy party, what do you get by restructuring, as the structure is only a means to delver the end? How can a change of structure make the leader trustworthy and the party trustworthy? How can the change in structure make the people at large put trust in the leadership and the party?

Another of the suggestions put forward by these intellectual experts is bring UPA or its kind, back. The theoretical arithmetic and clerical logic for this is that the sum of votes of all the parties in UPA is higher than that of BJP. But if only election results depended only on arithmetic! The flip side of this logic may be worse: If the common man asks how now a UPA would hold together because it could not hold together earlier, what is the answer? Also the common man’s perception, may be: the UPA was an association to loot India, we will never believe in anything like UPA.

Grouping to ensure so-called secularism against the BJP’s concept of secularism is another reason suggested to go back to UPA concept again. The concept that the only way to ensure secularism in this country is to appease minorities even against the interests of the majority vs. the concept that any Indian, where ever he is in the world is our concern and we want all Indians to prosper, the concept of inclusive development has been tested and even minorities do not want the former concept. This has been proven in so many elections and in so many regions across the country. It has also been proven in UP. Even a casual look at the caste/region wise basis of voting in the recent elections is evidence enough. Having spent years in Gujarat, I know for certain that Gujarat Muslims do not want any more the Congress’s concept of secularism.

So ha-ha about the fact that BJP did not give a single ticket to Muslim is going to fall in deaf years of the common man again. For a party like BJP it is not religion or caste any more but all-inclusive development that matters, it is not appeasing Hindus that voted BJP massively to power but the vindication of its policy of secularism that put it to power so massively in UP. Do minorities want a better Government or their representation in a Govt. that loots them and the country, is clearly settled and it is sad to see the so-called intellectuals on the Congress and some media are still blind to this. How do you explain the fact that the parties that aligned with the Congress in so many places got fewer seats than what a section of those parties themselves think that they would have got, had they not aligned with the Congress? The UP election and the seats SP got is one more example. How one faction of SP reacted even before the elections when Akhilesh joined hands with the Congress is also a fact that cannot be ignored.

And now comes the selection of the Chief minister and the articles in NDTV telling people it is an extremely bad omen. These intellectuals seem to be obsessed with their concept of secularism that they cannot think out of that closed, rigid and linear thinking. Suppose BJP delivers what they have promised UP people with the selected chief minister, where will such pundits who predict doom will go and hide themselves? It has happened in Gujarat, it is happening in Center, so why not in UP? In any case BJP is not so politically naïve as to let go the massive mandate and the golden opportunity they have now got in UP just because they want to drive “Hindutva”. The cost of doing something like that will be the high cost of losing 2019. They will see to it that 2019 is not risked at all - at any cost. Again the party is flexible and not rigid and closed like the Congress. It admits its mistakes and is open and prepared to do mid-course corrections. And let us not forget, there are two deputy chief ministers as a support and back up for the CM of UP. BJP knows how to work as a team and has shown to keep its promises to the people in spite of the organized propaganda against it by the opposition and the opposition supported media. The two deputy CM’s would act as a brake or as an accelerator on the CM depending on what he says or does or if and when he crosses the line. And they know through whom to act to check any damage in time too! Also the tremendous trust the party has put on the CM may make him far more accountable to what he says and does. In the least it may make him guarded in his speeches.

The Congress will find it very difficult to get out of the image that it only talks but does little. Dr Manmohan singh promised us that he will keep in touch with people, one fine morning after years of silence, with one interview a month with the press but nobody heard about it after the first fanfare start. Modi on the other hand never has missed a single man ki bhat for years. Dr. Manmohan singh promised another thing very clearly when he became PM and we believed him: That he would ensure certainly good governance and streamline the administration of the country. That trust that we placed in him was shattered in the ten years he was the PM. Again this was left to Modi to accomplish. So we have now a Govt. that is explicitly seen to do something. Earlier we felt that there was no Govt. at all in the country. No amount of intellectual analyses, talks, propaganda and personal victimization of the current PM can help the Congress party to get back to life as easily as it has done in the past. The Congress’s assumption that the future is a continuation of the past and in spite of the fall it has risen in the past, may not happen again. The sooner it realizes its blind personal criticism of Mr. Naredra Modi would enable it to get back to power will not work, the better because it is a total miscalculation done by the Congress party that has lost touch with the changing pulse of the people . The more the Congress and its infamous spokespersons on the TV channels and the media that party supports do this, the more the party would increase the distance between itself and the people and would continue to lose the pulse of the people- the precise requirement in a democracy for success. The same is true of the media as well. Their source of lasting success is also the trust the people place in their neutrality and certainly not being the mouthpiece, however subtle, of any political party.