Face saving 'grace'

Introspection ?

Raju Korti
Elections will come and elections will go. Puny Davids will make short work of towering Goliaths. Expedient politics will throw up strange bedfellows and 'new orders' will surface with every battle of the ballot. Yet, some things (will) never change.
I am referring to the regulation-speak political parties indulge in after the elections in the name of political post mortem. It is a script that reads like a pulp film of the self-chastising losers and self-aggrandizing winners -- and forgotten in no time.
After her party's shattering defeat, it was left to poor (!) Sonia Gandhi to "gracefully accept the public mandate" since all her garrulous and we-can-do-no-wrong generals had no other option but to beat a retreat from public exposure.
Said Sonia: "We accept people's verdict, but we shall deeply introspect what went wrong." There cannot be anything more hallucinatory than this -- the chairperson of the party that has had over forty- year crack at the country's governance unable to figure out what threw the dispensation out of power. For that matter every party that loses at the hustings promises to "deeply introspect" -- a promise that wears out in thin air like many other tall ones made in their manifestoes.
Even a teenager with a modicum of political understanding knows the kind of credibility the country's parties have -- granted the concession they do. One wonders what exactly do political leaders do when they "deeply introspect" because the sins of commissions and omissions are repeated when they return to power.
On the flip side, the winning party is too flush to temper its victory with the realization that its elevation to power has come about by default -- technically termed as "anti-incumbency factor". Accepting defeat or victory gracefully is not a virtue you would associate with our power-drunk parties.
Even as the Congress -- pipped in the manner it has been -- is trying to muster the courage to come to grips with its  rout, the rival BJP has gotten into its usual act of holier-than-thou. The "deep introspection" that it had promised in the post "India Shining" and "Feel Good"  elections that it so surprisingly lost, was consigned to the dustbin of history in no time. Now that it dreams of sweeping the general elections in 2014 as an "inevitable writing on the wall", its leaders are nursing grandiose delusions that they won on own their own steam. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the party of intellectuals that the Congress did so badly that people had to perforce look for the other option except in Delhi where the AAP broom worked better than a vacuum cleaner. But what can you expect when Arun Jaitley says with his characteristic arrogance "Let's see how this type (AAP) of arrangement lasts." Political parties in India steadfastly refuse to accept that a loss or victory is of their own doing.
Although handed the reins by default, the BJP would do well to shrug off its usual grandstanding and learn lessons from its shock defeat in the post-NDA era. What kind of "introspection" the party did after that is anyone's guess. Probably the same as what the Congress did (or did not) when the country's electorate slammed them in the post-emergency period. "Deep introspection" is a sham that doesn't cut ice with people even in an age when voters are lured with goodies and appeased on caste, election cards.
Take my word. In the run up to the 2014 elections, it will be back to Square One with these solemn utterances replaced by the usual bluster, bravado, allegations, counter-allegations, mud slinging, character assassination and cheap barbs. Political parties in India just cannot resist the temptation to score brownie points and get to accept the fact that they are better off at facing the people with a clean slate rather than paint their rivals black.
Politics will remain the first and last resort of the scoundrels. The story will continue at the cost of the people who can do precious little except to live on hope.