Political Diary

New Delhi, 2 January 2024

India 2024

CHALLENGES AHEAD

By Poonam I Kaushish 

Every time one tears a leaf off a calendar one sees a new place for new ideas and progress. So should one uncork champagne and roll out drums? By welcoming 2024 on wings of new hopes and promises? As 2023 goes go down in history as une année charnière, a tumultuous year, a mixed bag, India steps into 2024 with cautious hope as new set of challenges confront it.    

Politically, this year will see the world’s largest democratic exercise of general elections being held. A testament to roots that democracy has sunk in the country where less than 8 decades ago only quarter of people were eligible to vote and literacy levels in large swathes didn’t cross double digits. A ringing endorsement of our democratic ethos.  

Politically, if BJP’s Modi wins a third successive five-year Prime Ministerial term, he will be the first leader to do so since Congress’s Nehru. NaMo, as is his wont, drew a wide arc that seeks to encompass “550 years virasat with vikas, adhunikta with parampara where Viksit Bharat get Nayi Urja drawing upon aastha and Digital India synergies,” in ‘New Ayodhya’ readied for Lord Ram’s consecration 22 January.  

Alongside, using “labharthi” to reconstitute citizenship bringing under it farmers, poor, youth, women calling them the four biggest castes, “saanjhi taakat” of targeted welfare schemes, fulfillment of “Modi’s  guarantees,” infrastructure upgrade, rescinding Article 370  and temple as the centerpiece of its formidable dare of a tough electoral challenge to the 26 Opposition Parties INDIA Bloc. 

Questionable, can Opposition’s strategy to present a united front derail BJP’s juggernaut? Can Congress’s Rahul, regional satraps TMC’s Chief Mamata, NCP, DMK, JD(U), RJD put aside their differences? Can it counter BJP’s ‘reinvented’ citizenship by re-invoking Mandal read caste census, by underscoring the unfulfilled agenda of social justice?  Can it compromise on seat sharing? 

The challenge will have to take into account BJP has honed and hardened its core message and added layers to its appeal. Presently, Mandir is not just ‘colliding’ with Mandal but also co-opted it. Certainly, while the unfinished societal impartiality agenda might be a counter-strategy, is Congress, INDIA a credible vehicle of that vision? Importantly, does it have the capacity?   

Pertinently, Treasury-Opposition distrust was starkly visible in Parliament’s winter session with 146 MPs suspended for “misconduct,” showcasing how dysfunctional the legislature has become. Amidst the continuing logjam and penchant for notching up brownie points, all conveniently brush under the carpet that Parliament is a sacred symbol of our democracy. The onus is on both Government and Opposition to ensure smooth running of both Houses. 

Time our MPs realize their key job is to legislate. Remember, Parliamentary democracy does not begin and end with elections, it’s a continuous process whereby even as Opposition has its say, Government has its way. The electorate takes a cue from Parliament. A House that functions in a healthy atmosphere of dialogue, dissent and debate sends out a positive message to people. 

Besides, in an era of political polarisation and contest, multiplicity and overlapping of identities, increasingly, we are getting more casteist and communal whereby a distraught India is searching for her soul under an increasing onslaught of intolerance and criminalization. 

Amidst this aakrosh, the common man continues to struggle for roti, kapada aur makaan with an increasingly angry and restive janata demanding answers. Sick of  crippling morass of our neo-Maharajas with their power trappings and suffering from Acute Orwellian syndrome of “some-are-more-equal-than-others” and Oliver’s disorder, “always asking for more”. 

Tragically, nobody has time for aam aadmi’s growing disillusionment with the system which explodes in rage. Turn to any mohalla, district or State, the story is mournfully the same. Resulting in more and more people taking law into their own hands and borne out by increasing rioting and looting.

Capital Delhi is replete with gory tales of crime and murders. The system has become so sick that women are raped in crowded trains with co-passengers as mute spectators. Sporadically converting the country into andher nagri wherein our sensibilities are benumbed. The daily despicable beastly horrors of sexual harassment and assault on  women fails to trouble our collective conscience. 

As the New Year unfolds, India will have to contend with an increasingly unstable world with foreboding, as wars in Ukraine and Gaza spill over and escalate and new ones erupt in incipient fault lines across the world. The most powerful instruments of violence are available to State and non-State actors. This embrace of unrestrained violence is matched by new instruments of war wonders of technological advancement whose frenetic pace is leaving Government’s bedazzled and bewildered. 

Domestically, Government needs to look at how security challenges in Jammu & Kashmir and Manipur can be addressed while ameliorating inflamed public opinion over the ambush of security personnel, custodial killings in Poonch, Naxal menace and strife in Manipur. Clearly, New Delhi needs to deal with the unfolding situation sympathetically as it could lead to multiple fault lines, which could polarise our plural society and threaten the survival of the Indian State. 

On the external front India relations with China and Pakistan are like playing poker. Show no emotions even as one plans strategy, play is multi-causal, defiantly stand one’s ground and gambling on a winning hand. Despite umpteen military and diplomatic dialogues over-22 months and continuing standoff in Eastern Ladakh, Beijing continues to take “incremental and tactical” actions to press its claims along the LAC. While elections in Pakistan and Bangladesh might become portends of more instability in South Asia, New Delhi needs to keep a keen eye on their political churn.

It is a paradox of our times that just when most of our challenges and threats to our well-being have become global, our attitudes have become more narrowly national. There is no alternative to truly collaborative responses delivered through empowered institutions of governance whose guiding principle is equity. 

As we move ahead our leaders need to stop getting their shorts in knots over excessive trivia, get their act together, take responsibility, amend their ways and address real serious issues of governance. They must realize India’s democratic prowess owes its resilience to the aam aadmi. Our policy makers need to redouble their efforts on the ease of living as people want jobs, transparency and accountability including bolstering public health, plugging learning gaps in education. 

Besides, no matter who wins or loses  Modi and INDIA Opposition bloc needs to put its act together with leaders with grit and determination who can and are ready to build a new India as there are shared stakes in a life together built by a multi-plural society of diverse people and communities which constitute the life of a nation. 

Ultimately, when the battle of ideas and ideologies skid and careen noisily our rulers need to focus on what they are going to do to make 2024 a good year. Time to get back to basics, build a climate safe country and reignite the magic of simplicity and minimalism. They need to become more humane and painstakingly secure heritage of multi-faith tolerance and grass-root democracy whereby, the principles of ‘Jus Ad Bellum’: right authority, right intention and reasonable hope dictate our responses. What gives? ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)