In India, you do not have to a be a political pundit to know elections are round the corner. In the season of juke ballot box, there are two regulation issues that spring up like dog's mushrooms and these manifest in the grey columns of newspapers or the talk time (!) on television channels. The Bofors scam and the Third Front, which interest no one except the players involved.
The Third Front is not even a conundrum. Its heavyweights from the Janata Dal (A to Z), Bahujan Samaj Party, Telugu Desam, Communist Party of India, All India Forward Bloc and Samajwadi Party realise at the convenient time that the people, heavily fed on the "pro-rich" economic policies of the Congress and the "communal and fascist" face of the Bharatiya Janata Party, want a "refreshing" change in the riff raff medley composed of the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati. So we have a Third Front that is "pro-poor, pro-farmer, pro-worker, pro-OBC, pro-Dalit, pro-women (!), pro-minorities and pro-youth." It is as if there can be no other dispensation that is so generously inclined to the cause of a welfare state. But the plain and unwarnished truth is this alliance is unholy and rank opportunistic trying to cobble up a poorly stitched coalition that breaks faster than it forms.
The man who unleashed this monstrous atrocity on the people is none other than "Mr Clean" VP Singh who let loose the Mandal hell on the polity, putting it back by ages. The trick is to use names that are meant to throw dust in the eyes of people. So you cannot be faulted if the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) sounds dangerously similar to United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of Sonia Gandhi.
Lost for an issue? Launch a Third Front. That seems to be the underlying principle (?) of these parties who would not bother to know where is the common ideological ground. If there is any, of course. Poor people! If the main choice is dreadful, the alternative is worse. If the arrangement is born out of an "anti-Congress, anti-BJP", it is best left to imagine where is the ideology in all this.
Now that the elections are not far away, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has been supporting the Congress-led government from outside all these years, has abruptly realised that the scam-tainted government led by mum's-the-word Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needs to be ejected. He is of course the same Mulayam who has bailed out the Congress during the trust vote on Indo-US nuclear deal. If he so vociferously supported Pranab Mukherjee as the presidential candidate, it was not out of charity but to wriggle out of the disproportionate cases against him. With the Congress on a shaky wicket, Mulayam's (un)conventional wisdom tells him that Third Front is the need of the hour.
The tragedy here is that both Congress and BJP are not going to win the elections on ther own steam in 2014 and it is going to hurtle the country into another opportunistic, self-seeking, power-hungry phase. Ask yourself which Third Front will it be and you know the throes of uncertainties staring at you.
Just for the record, the first Third Front government in 1989 led by VP Singh -- the National Government -- lasted barely more than a year with outside support from the Left while the second in 1996 with 13 splinter parties lasted around 21 months with outside support from the Congress. Mulayam was the defence minister here. This time round, he is defending himself!
The message in the history is loud and clear. Mulayam and his friends are just sabre-rattling. His home state presently in the hands of his son Akhilesh, Mulayam is now eyeing prime ministerial gaddi in the fond hope that the Third Front will climb to power with outside support from the Congress. And if nothing else, Congress is sure about one thing: If it cannot come to power, it must bend backwards to ensure BJP too doesn't. So never mind if crooks are propped up at the cost of a hapless people.
Given the gullibility and political proclivities of the Indian electorate, even if the UPA comes to power again, it cannot discount the Mulayam and Mayawati factors. It's not about the incumbency or anti-incumbency factor. Its all about you-scratch-my-back-I scratch-your's and you-tickle-mine-I-tickle your's.
The Third Front is at best an unproductive political masturbation of the senile.
dear raju garu,
ReplyDeleteThe Third Front is at best an unproductive political masturbation of the senile.
here i dont agree with you. even if it is true - it is better than a shameless dangerous scam party like congress and a highly communal ( just to put fear into the congress and false pride in the hindu voter ) which has given up on the hindu and the hindu sentiment long back after vajpai's exit.
if india just elects the non corrupt ( may be i am talking of a utopian situation ) really clean people from independents, AAP, Lok Satta, and any party what so ever, the numbers in cong and bjp will be negligible.
in such a scenario the third front will automatically become productive even after masturbation.
that is what we should be heading for. till now modi has proved himself to be a joker and bjp and rss has projected him since too many in bjp want the chair and a new person was acceptable.
congress is too very spoiled and worn out to withstand time and the pangs of justice.
india is left with a hung parliament in 2014, unless it really shakes up its idea's and vote responsibly.
we have to truly wait and watch as the youth will call the shots at the hustings.
warm regards,
ramesh narain kurpad