DC Edit | PM Must Set Democratic Example on SIR Protests
Opposition protests over voter roll deletions highlight concerns about electoral accountability
One of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourite taglines for India is that it is the mother of democracy and that it has experimented with the idea for millennia. Mr Modi, like all Indians, has every right to be proud of the country’s democratic credentials but his response to the agitation for electoral transparency undertaken by the Opposition and led by the Congress hardly fits that of the ruler of the world’s largest democracy.
Mr Modi laments that the world is going in search for certainty but the Congress is unmindful of it and creating chaos in the country. The statement does not exactly reflect the goings-on across countries. The disenchantment with the existing order that has failed to address basic necessities of the masses has them hitting the streets seeking reformation of the systems which they feel are self-serving. They posit the stand that the governments are duty-bound to provide for food, clothing, housing and employment, translated to Indian context as roti, kapda, makam and rozgari.
In India, the people, especially the youngsters, are on a protest path. Having successfully evicted a man who proved a failure as India’s education minister, they are now aiming for the men who presided over a criminal purge of the electoral roll undermining the Constitution, the law and basic principles of democracy, including universal adult suffrage. They are outraged that the names of close to 15 per cent of the voters have been struck off the rolls using hitherto unheard-of terms such as “logical discrepancies”.
That the BJP and the government it leads at the Centre have found no fault with the Election Commission is no reason why the Opposition also must share it. The beauty of democracy lies in the space the ruling party gives to the Opposition and the efforts it makes to accommodate its legitimate demands. Instead of pursuing that model, Mr Modi seeks to make fun of the principal Opposition party and its leader. Such as approach hardly helps.
The BJP, an offshoot of the Jan Sangh, started off as a two-member party in the Lok Sabha and pursued its politics unwaveringly over the decades to come to power, first with the help of its allies and then on its own. The party won two back-to-back elections under Mr Modi but failed to keep the momentum the third time. It is up to the people to decide which party and leader should come to the helm; no leader can arrogate to himself the power to decide the course of politics in the country.
The BJP, after coming to power in 2014, launched a slogan so dangerous that no democratic party could ever think of: Congress-mukt Bharat, a country with no space for its principal Opposition party. Mr Modi has now chosen to call the Congress, which his party wanted to eliminate from the Indian political scene, “parasite”; and those who oppose the ideas of the ruling party “dimaagi Naxals (Naxals of the mind)”. It shows a kind of inability to live with a divergent opinion, hardly a quality that befits the Prime Minister of India.
India is done with its life under Emergency; mutual respect and accommodation are what it seeks to present before the chaotic world. Mr Modi should take the lead in showcasing the advantages of such an approach; and not its sabotage.
