Illusion of alternatives in Indian politics
Do Indian voters actually have different choices in the multi-party system?
With more than 50 political parties (recognised by Election Commission of India nationally or at state level) in India , question remains whether the voter has the luxury of different thinking and ideologies. Currently the competition between the parties seems to be whatever you can do, I can do better and providing little to no alternatives to the problems faced by the country.
Economy
Every political party supports one or other free schemes, it comes down to the matter of who gives/promises more free stuff on the day of voting for majority of rural and poor population. Even if the intention behind them are good, no one analyses the negative effect it causes on the standard of living and actually doesn’t help the intended class in the long run.
Let us take agriculture for example, it constitutes 42% of the labor force, yet contributes only 16% of the GDP. Imagine if you are running a business and you are facing losses, either you change you strategies and make a profit or close down the business. Seems logical, but government comes up with a new third option of giving tax payers’ money just enough to make minimum profit for living and chances of improving the income very low. This is precisely what is happening in the agricultural sector. The government instead of helping guide farmers to grow what is most profitable in the region, provides them free water, electricity, minimum support price and loan waivers which leads to stagnant income levels.
Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses - Lionel Robbins (British economist)
In essence there is no one major party which opposes free schemes.
Social
The “affirmative” action of reservation in education and jobs has increased over the years with no political party even daring to question the evil proponent of judging people on their immutable characteristics such as caste. This system supposedly designed to help backward castes in itself assumes that each and every person of the community has been subjected to some sort of ancestral injustice and the each and every member of the “upper class” have used their caste as privilege to reach the position they hold.
Over the past 70 plus years on independence, more and more classes have been added onto the list of reservation and not even one has been removed as part of upliftment.
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character - Martin Luther King Jr.
In simpler terms, the solution for lower caste oppression is not reverse upper caste oppression. The cost of reservation is not only lowering of standards, but also incentivises the people to get on to streets to get their community under reservation. Politicians love promising rising reservation for votes. No one major party in India wants to go up against this system, even though there is a large group of silent majority who support it.
There are a lot of other aspects in which voters do not have choice. India did not remain poor because of British for better part after independence, it was because of the socialist government which held back the growth of India. Most political leaders in India still take pride in calling themselves “socialists”. In order for India to progress even further we need an alternative leader/party which is ready to take on the mainstream narrative in the news, social media, academia and pop culture.
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Good article.
Whatever socialist perspective these political leaders had was as a result of years of deliberation done to imagine a nation, a nation where each individual had a dignified life. India was still facing extreme inequality(socially & economically) due to a system of zamindars , middlemen created over centuries of British rule. Having a capitalistic model at this juncture in Indian history would've been detrimental to the ideals that emerged during the freedom struggle. Although it had many drawbacks the motive to have socialistic ideals was as a result of public opinion.
Yes now India has moved way ahead of its social division patterns and what it needs is a re-balance in the economic sphere.