Back-to-back defeats in Ayodhya and Badrinath show swaying the voters using religion is no longer viable. India Alliance won ten seats, BJP two and Independent one in the recent bye-elections. Can there be a clearer message that the voters' mood is shifting? They are not enthused by religious fanaticism, communal frenzy, or orchestrated arrangement of the supreme leader through media manipulation. The voters have seen through such tactics and they refuse to be influenced. Otherwise, such a dismal show in the bye-elections after the slump to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha wouldn’t have been possible. What the top BJP leadership now needs is a serious, unbiased ‘Atmachintan’.
Only a dramatic reorientation of the ruling party’s governance strategy can help to reverse the downward spiral. Spreading hatred, coercing the opposition through misuse of the government institutions, turning a blind eye to real-life issues like unemployment and price rise etc. have devastated the electoral fortunes of the BJP.
What The Voters Need
Energetic steps to reinvigorate the declining education system, so that India produces skilled manpower for both white and blue-coloured jobs worldwide. This will, over a short period, create jobs both inside and overseas. Countries in Europe, Japan, South Korea and even China need skilled workers. Sadly, under the present leadership, education has fallen to the lowest rung of government priorities. Funding for this crucial sector plummets budget after budget both at the Centre and in the states.
Implement policies to ensure farmers don’t do farming just for sustenance, but for profit. Coax the farmers to innovate to produce more value-added products that can be easily and lucratively sold in cities and even exported.
One example is cities where IT companies thrive and suffuse with the buying power of their workers. Such health-conscious customers crave organic foods, freshly-plucked fruits, and naturally-produced dairy products such as free-range eggs, chickens, milk without chemicals and ghee from the country’s traditional cow species, not the steroid-enabled cows in industrial diaries where the cattle are fed not grass or straw, but hormone-rich fodder, often with bits of meat.
When offered good prices, and super-efficient logistics, the production consumption and culture of ‘healthy’ foods will increase by leaps and bounds. High-earning consumers in cities will just lap up such unique foods. Farmers’ profits will surge, and more and more of the languishing MNREGA workers will switch to farming instead of looking for government handouts.
Stop the ‘distribution of highly subsidized food rations. The government now feeds 80 crore Indians at taxpayers’ cost. As a vote-gathering strategy, this policy has run its course. Instead, they want jobs, good education, easily accessible healthcare, and a vastly improved delivery model for the government’s social sector benefits.
Endemic corruption at the grassroots level emitters the beneficiaries and leaves them resentful. As a result, the government loses the goodwill for its well-intentioned policies. Corruption and a colonial-era condescending attitude towards the humble villagers by the officialdom are the two reasons why the BJP and the earlier governments paid a heavy electoral price. Such an entranced attitude towards ordinary citizens needs to be eradicated.
Contrastingly, workers in the IT sectors and privately owned companies get jobs solely on merit. No hush money. No influencing works in the HR departments. If the employee fails to deliver, they are shown the door. Accountability, skill-building and productivity decide how far will the employee progress in their careers.
Why can't such work ethics not be adopted by the bureaucrats and even the elected representatives? How many times do you get to see a bureaucrat or an MLA or MP coming to your doorstep to enquire about your wellbeing? The answer is ‘nil’ except just before the elections.
How does a clerk in a Tahsildar’s office behave with you when you approach them for a small, but legitimate grievance? They treat you with scorn till you oil their palms. If the prime minister and the chief ministers want, they can muster enough political will to transform the face of the government. This is an arduous path. The citizen-government interface has continued to remain murky and depressing.
Distributing freebies to please voters is much easier to pave the way for electoral success. This explains why India feeds 80 crore of its citizens. No wonder, with such a poor governance model, India ranks so low in the Global Hunger Index, Global Happiness Index, and Global Democracy Index.
Stop intelligent and resourceful Indians from fleeing the country. In the last decade or so, there has been a disturbing surge in the numbers of high net-worth Indians migrating to other countries does not augur well for the country. It’s a huge loss. Given a congenial environment, they would stay back, grow their businesses, provide employment and pay taxes here to their own country’s coffers.
Gujarat, a historical land of world-class business brains top this ever-increasing list of migrating Indians. How often do the top government leaders hold one-to-one interviews with such HNW families to discover why they intend to leave their motherland? The answer is ‘Vey rarely’. The heart-to-heart interaction would possibly expose many pitfalls of the government. The exit interviews would throw up facts that would be so sour to the interviewers.
Among the factors that debilitate the country are factors like manipulated media, a compromised judiciary, rampant misuse of coercive powers of the government, discrimination of minorities, a dying education system, and the blatant disregard of the Constitution. The resulting vitiated environment of the country forces HNWs to move to greener pastures. The ruling dispensation feels these practices, though illegal and immoral, fetch them votes. According to the establishment, it would be imprudent to restore the ‘rule of law’ by reversing the above regressive trends.
Tax the rich and prevent the country’s enhanced wealth from being pocketed by a handful of families. A very reputed business house in Mumbai recently organised a jarringly opulent wedding of their son. The expense figures and the TV footage, though understandably imprecise and somewhat selective, cause revulsion and disgust in the minds of millions of Indians who see the scenes on TV channels. The thought arises – Had the industrialist donated a part of these millions of rupees to fund research in institutions like the CSIR, DRDO, IITs and NITs to work on areas such as AI, semiconductors, drone warfare, quantum computing etc, how much would the country have gained.
After all ‘Make in India’ is our prime minister’s pet idea. But, with no addition to the country’s technological and scientific prowess, how can we make most things in India match world-class quality?
Just close your eyes. Enact a legislation for the super-rich– Either they they start labour-intensive business ventures to create hundreds and thousands of jobs, or part with 75 per cent of their accumulated wealth. Can the political leaders muster enough courage to enact such laws? The answer is ‘No’.
It's normal for parents to wish that their sons and daughters live happy married lives. However, the enduring happiness of married life does not at all depend on the amount spent on the festivities. It depends on how the two souls manage to iron out their differences and set out on a spiritual journey marked by exceptional devotion to their God-given life roles. The Bhagvat Gita has enough lessons of a fulfilling life. But, who bothers? Nearly the entire political establishment cutting across party lines was there feasting their eyes and pallets with the exotic cuisines and the extravaganza. So, disturbing for an introspective Indian’s mind!
Encourage startups: It can be of any genre, any domain, and any size. Starting an orchard, setting up a food-processing unit, setting up model schools, starting self-help groups etc. must all be treated as start-ups that qualify for government patronage. New mini ventures in the field of IT, innovative manufacturing, armament development etc. are elite ideas that would absorb the country’s best brains. Why not be very proactive in this field? Sadly, no minister thinks about it seriously. Everything is left to the prime minister. Does he have the mind space for such brain-storming, evolutionary ideas? The answer is ‘Hardly’.
The above are just a few of the ‘weak’ areas of the present government that cause so much disillusionment among the voters. The voters want a clear path towards progress and poverty alleviation, not opportunistic policies or incendiary rhetoric. Will the leaders heed and course-correct? Only time will tell.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication.
