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General Elections 2009: Regional parties should be washed away

After India attained Independence, for a long time, it was one Party dominated show. Congress use to win handsomely against Communist Parties and erstwhile Jan Sangh. Jawahar lal Nehru’s Era passed away and then came Indira Gandhi. She over a period of time started treating the local Chief Ministers badly. Chief Ministers were sidelined, unceremoniously removed etc.Then to counter this dictatorial attitude of Indira Gandhi lot of Regional Parties crop up like TDP, COngress(O), Congress(S) etc. Some of them started with good principles but later on became a one person/family/caste dominated.

Then there was frequent attempt of clubbing these regional parties to form some kind of Anti Congress and Anti BJP Front but the funny thing was that this so called Third front whenever it came to Power always decided to choose between lesser evil of that time either Congress or BJP to be in Power. So while in 1989 V.P Singh took help from BJP, in 1996 Devgouda/IK Gujral Government took help of Congress.Obviously devoid of any ideological base and formed purely on Opportunist needs these Governments couldn’t last long.

Left is always behind uniting these regional forces, first to broaden its own base and secondally constant instability in India suits Left.These small regional parties squabble on small issues and always hinder the bigger Picture. But luckily some changes started since 1991 which slowly will make these small parties irrelevant though there will be some small period of turbulence. I will explain this in more detail.

In 1991 PV Narasimha Rao was selected as Prime Minister after unfortunate demise of Rajiv Gandhi.One thing which he did good was that he slowly whisked away the Politics of Arrogance and Confrontation and instead replaced it with Policy of Consensus. He took into confidence the main opposition Party i.e BJP and brought down the support of small regional Parties instead of trying to finish or Occupy them. PVN also gave the required respect to the regional Chief Ministers.He never changed the local Chief ministers. Local leaders like DigVijay Singh and Ashok Gehlot got prominence during his rule only. He started the process of Politics of Consensus.

Then the same process was continued by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He took ito next step.He took Coalition Politics to next level. First time in india pure form of Federalism was established. Vajpayee was the one who gave the real respect and prestige to position of Chief Minister.Vajpayee was so peculiar on federalism that he preferred and promoted Chandra Babu Naidu more than his own Party Chief Misters as Babu changed the perception that CM’s only need to do Dirty Politics and no work. Besides this Atal Bihari Vajpayee tolerated the tantrums of his allies to the point of being humiliated.He swallowed this for the betterment of the Country.

The NDA’s succes in managing the Government till 2004, running it well and doing milestone changes was one of the turning points in history of India.Because NDA united all the allies, UPA was forced to be united and all its allies behaved very well during 2004-2009, doesn’t matter whether it was on false pretext of Secularism. India has never seen such Democratic Unity in last 1000 years. It was always some ruthless dictator calling the shots. Though NDA lost 2004 Elections but it has united India and made it 2 polar which will give some amount of stability to this country albeit they will obviously differ in their performances.

Good development was that even Ruthlessly Centralized Party like Congress also started believing in Federalism and started giving importance to its Chief Ministers.Andhra Pradesh has only one Chief Minister for last 5 years. A great achievement for Good Old Congress.

Another good development which has happened is that National Parties like BJP groomed leaders which are as good and as agressive on any local issue as any so called regional leaders.We have leaders like Narendra Modi, Shivraj Chauhan, Yeddurappa, Nitin Gadkiri who are as good as any regional leaders. Thus most of the regional parties are irrelevant now.

So except for few good regional parties like TDP (telgu Desam) party or some few NDA allies like JD(U) in Bihar, all should be wiped out. The issue with the so called good Regional Parties is that they are just dominated by one good person and one defeat in an election will totally wipe it out. e.g Nitish Kumar in Bihar is strong because of BJP backing and the day he looses one election, his colleagues who are the original Laloo team, will eat him up.

So it is in interest of this country that all regional party slowly wither away and country becomes bipolar between BJP and Congress.Now again Left has started the process of destablizng the country. Most of the regional parties are involved in Blackmailing. With trouled Neighbourhood and Recession looming before us we can’t have weak and sleeping Prime Ministers at Centre !!!.

• Blog Author : Randheer Singh
• Blog URL : http://www.4octave.com/2009/03/15/general-elections-2009-regional-parties-should-be-washed-away/

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