Amit Kushari IAS (retd)
Everywhere in India today we are witnessing unabashed, uncompromising populism on the eve of general elections. Every political party is trying to outdo its political opponents by making populist announcements to get a few votes more than its rivals–and this is true for almost all parties. Every thing is fair in love and war, and general elections in India are fought like a war.
The path was shown for such shameless populism by Shri Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Aadmi Party when he subsidised electricity bills of defaulters to the tune of 50% and the money for the subsidy was taken from the tax payers money of the Delhi Government. This was really an unprecedented step which no other party had taken so far. Many of the leaders of AAP are from Haryana, Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh and naturally they are trying to quickly build up a political space for themselves in Haryana, western UP and Punjab. Since a large number of people in these areas have a very backward, medieval mindset and have scant regard for human rights, specially rights of women, the AAP leaders are trying to woo these voters by calling the medieval Khap Panchayats , which trample on human rights openly, “NGOs doing good social work”. You will never hear Kejriwal and his friends criticizing the diktats of the Khaps calling for capital punishment for Hindus marrying in the same gotra. There are many Sikhs in Punjab who, being liberal minded in religious matters , do not want to vote for Akali Dal and at the same time do not want to vote for Congress. AAP is trying to secure their votes by moving the Supreme Court to get Mr. Bhullar saved from the gallows. Bhullar had assassinated a Congress Chief Minister of Punjab. The CM of Tamil Nadu took a quick lesson from Kejriwal to play on the sentiments of Tamils. She decided to release from prison 7 Tamilian assassins of former P.M. Rajiv Gandhi, leaving her opponents like DMK and MDMK dumbfounded. The Supreme Court had to step in to stop this rank populism.
The Congress party lost no time to make populist schemes like subsidized food for the rural and urban poor,wrecking the economy of India. It ultimately raised the cap on LPG cylinders from 9 to 12 and declared a big bonanza for Central government employees by merging 50% D.A. with basic pay and providing a 100% D.A. This will certainly bring back quite a few middle class voters to the Congress fold. Had they increased the income tax exemption limit, to say, 5 lakhs or 6 lakhs more voters would have returned to Congress from other parties. Usually BJP makes an announcement just before elections that if voted to power they would enhance the IT exemption limit substantially.
Congress knew that it would lose heavily in coastal Andhra (with 25 Lok Sabha seats ) due to the emergence of the popular Jagan Reddy and the emboldened Chandra Babu Naidu. So it tried to appease the voters of Telengana(17 seats) by granting a separate Telengana state. BJP also helped in the creation of Telengana…. hoping that it may get a small slice of the Telengana cake. If this gamble succeeds and Congress can make an alliance with TRS, the Congress may win 7/8 seats from Telengana region, saving itself from the disgrace of scoring a zero from the whole of Andhra Pradesh. In Maharashtra the Nav Nirman Sena of Raj Thakre also indulged in unprecedented populism by asking people not to pay toll taxes.
Now the people of India have to decide with their intelligence whether they would reward these populist leaders by their votes or will they guide them to the true path of democracy by not encouraging unabashed populism.
(The author is former Financial Commissioner, J&K Feedback to the author at 09748635185 or amitkus@ hotmail.com )
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