Congress and India

I have tried largely to keep this forum a pace for intellectual debate and avoided politics, but more importantly it is a forum for things I feel strongly about, so I will deviate from this practice this one time. In fact, I started with writing a status on my Facebook page and decided this warranted a more laborious effort.

I have never been a big fan of 'Mahatma' Gandhi and similarly, by consequence of that choice, of the Congress. I, like a large number of Indians, have a feeling of resentment for the fact that Gandhi made us come out as a nation of ultra pacifists to the point of looking more like beggars with his brand of Satyagraha politics. I do feel that leaders like Sardar Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose should have had a bigger say in shaping the future of  India. From how the events unfolded, and the way that Gandhi-Nehru family has dominated the political scene for most of the time, it feels that India has been under the rule of a clan and makes one wonder how much better it is for us to be under their rule instead of our erstwhile colonial masters.

The only alternative I have seen (other than Janata Dal in the late 70s and 80s) is BJP. Hailing from Bengal, I find Left, with their focus on arresting any possible development, a despicable set of people. The BJP was obviously seen as a ray of new hope by Indians and hence given the vote during 1998-2004 under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee (ABV). As I look at it, India is a country with tremendous potential which was born some 60 odd years back. The problem was that being immature, having never governed a country before, the leaders did make some obvious mistakes and obviously have had members who are corrupt. Sadly, a political establishment with no corruption is not a realistic dream and a leader giving us that remains something to be seen only in Bollywood movies. The problem is not that Indians are more corruptible and so we end up having the more corrupt leaders, it is the simple fact that man at his worst is an asshole and he tends to take advantage of very opportunity to do any evil he can get away with. The problem is that somehow this mechanism to prosecute such worst of men has been a total failure. More realistically, I think having an establishment in which the major leaders are not corrupt and do not allow their juniors open ground for corruption and punishment for those stupid/unlucky enough to be caught is a fairly reasonable demand. With the way voting goes on and the multi-party system - coalition politics come into play and to a cynical mind it kind of legalizes presence of some corruption. Given that, I have seen that there were scandals a plenty during the BJP or rather NDA (the BJP led coalition) rule but these do not compare to the ones we have seen in the recent years with the Congress led UPA coalition. Also, interesting point to note is that the strong mandate Congress received made them less feeble to the whims of their partners. Still, we have seen the Hon. MMS looking the other way as the country is being plundered. I do believe that if it was only some junior minister from a coalition partner, things would have been different. I would not say that MMS benefited from the scams but then again he is more of a front to the matriarch of the Gandhi family.