It was 1996. The BJP had come to power, albeit for a short time, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the PM. On the 12th day, he resigned before facing a vote of confidence, which would have forced him to resign anyway. But before that, he gave a speech, and a speech that made me a fan of this guy .
1998. In the middle of a coalition crisis, AB Vajpayee announces Pokharan 2. I am not sure if I am a supporter of nuclear weapons or not, but surely this was the most powerful political move I had seen till that point in my life. Finally, we had a leader who had a powerful answer to everything. The Kargil conflict, the IC-814 hijacking, and the negotiations of the nuclear weapons deal with the western world and the UN, all and all, we still supported this guy and his party. For some reason, there was something about them,maybe it was their powerful oratorship of these leaders, Vajpayee, Pramod Mahajan, Jasvant Singh or Brijesh Mishra, or maybe it was just the fact that we found these leaders to be wise and intelligent, and most importantly,they laid emphasis on things that needed it, not like . this (thanks Animesh for pointing the broken link),or maybe it was just the personna which would always make me a fan of the team which I thought would lead India into the 21st century.
But today, everyone looks useless. Be it the Congress wholesome support of reservations for SC/ST/OBC, or the BJP's vehement opposition to the nuclear deal( which I am sure they would have signed if they were in power, and the Congress would have opposed it),and of course the left, who seriously look to have no business than to threaten to bring down the government. And with events like these , the credibility of the the BJP keeps going down by the day.
Maybe it's time for some retrospection. Or to support someone like an political party started by educated people . Or maybe we need someone like this . I wish I was strong enough to do something like that. But that's what the problem is. Everyone knows that politics is a dirty gutter, but no one wants to clean it.
3 comments:
while reading this, i was thinking about leaving you a note saying see lok-paritran. we should support it. :)
and saw that at the end of the post :)
Politics in india - Bimal Jalan. it's a must read. ..
1. HT link broken.
2. Experiments like lok-paritran need political savvy, as much as they need goodwill in heart and top-notch degrees. See this, and this, for what I mean. The post I like best on this topic is this one.
3. My metric of which-party-to-vote-for: Did you, when in power, help in mass-killings? With the Sikh killings in 1986 in Delhi, the Muslim-burning in Gujarat in 2002, and the recent violence in Singur in communist-ruled WB, I think all 3 major powers in India [Congress, BJP, and the left] have lost my vote.
4. What I think can be an interesting start of reform is the option to vote a "none of the above" in the polls. If that option gets the most votes, all candidates are disqualified from the seat, and the elections happen again. What say?
test comment. I think I just lost a long comment :(
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