Politics & Politicians Over The Years : Let us see how the polity changed over the years
-In the 50s the political leaders had the aura and clean image, in general they were not corrupt. Even in that period some wrong elements started entering politics with the aim of making unaccounted (Black) money. The PM Jawaharlal Nehru had a charisma which was unparalleled , people and the Congress leaders used to listen to him. In this decade there was only one major scandal(Mundra), the value of which was only 1.25 Cr, and Nehru in the end was compelled to ask his finance minister to resign. The person who exposed this scam was Nehru’s own son in law Firoze Gandhi. During this decade Regional Leaders had their value and they were respected and heard by Central Govt.
-In the 60s till the regime of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the polity was tolerably good, but it started going down after indira Gandhi became PM. Within few years she wanted to control every thing, including she wanted state leaders to work according to her ideas and slowly state leaders of repute started feeling suffocated in the Congress, and they started leaving the party and started forming their own outfit. There were few scams during this decade.
-Now come to 70s, it was in this decade when the polity really went down. Indira Gandhi after Bangladesh war, started feeling at the top of the world and invincible. She became arrogant, instead of respecting judiciary decision she imposed emergency, and what happened during emergency is known widely. After lifting of emergency and experiment of Janata Party was also disastrous for the country. There were few scams like Nagarwala and Maruti Vehicles. Polity which had started declining in the 60s when defections started, reached its nadir during this decade. This decade also saw the emergence of maximum Regional leaders and smaller political parties.
-During the decade of 80s, after the failure of Janata Party. Indira Gandhi came back to power with great majority, but she suffered a personal set back with the death of his younger son Sanjay Gandhi. She then inducted his other son Rajiv Gandhi into politics, who became PM after her death and whose one remark led to massacare of Sikh community in the country. Rajiv Gandhi was rumoured to be involved with Bofors scam, which was only for Rs 64 crores. During this decade one another major thing happened which was birth of Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP), a political party which was an off shoot of earlier Jan Sangh. This party took over the Hindutava plank after Rajiv Gandhi open the doors of Ram Mandir in Babri mosque area. After the defeat of Congress in 1989 elections, once again opposition party tried the Janata experiment of 70s which also failed.
– In the 90s: Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated during elections in 1991. Congress formed a coalition govt under PV Narsimhararao’s leadership, although he did a good job of controlling economy and congress men, but during his regime there were many scams, and in some scams his direct involvement was suspected. It was first time after independence that there was no member of Nehru/Gandhi in top leadership of Congress. Rao lost the next general election in 1996, BJP formed a govt under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which lasted only 13 days. Again for next 2 years Janata experiment was repeated again, which again failed, then after 1998 elections again Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed the govt which lasted one year, there were again elections in 1999, again BJP led alliance formed the govt under Vajpayee , which lasted its full term. In this decade 6 times PM took oath of the office & they were Narsimharao, HD Devegowda, IK Gujral and Atal Bihari Vajpayee took oath three times. You can imagine the condition of polity in this decade. In the last quarter of this decade Sonia Gandhi, wife of Rajiv Gandhi, was chosen to lead Congress, and she tried to form a coalition govt when Vajpayee lost the vote of confidence by 1 vote, but she was unsuccessful in her attempt.
-In the first decade of new century till mid 2004, it was BJP led coalition govt who was in power, under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. There were few internal bickering in 2nd rung of leadership in BJP, as in BJP also there were many power centre like Vajpayee, Advani and indirect interference of RSS. In the same period the things were not rosy in Congress, as few congress leaders were against Sonia Gandhi as she is of Italian origin and not natural born Indian. BJP govt thought Congress is at a shaky ground and they went for election six months earlier in 2004. This moves misfired and Congress led UPA came to power and how Manmohan Singh became PM, is a known episode of India’s political history . First 4 years of UPA 1 govt went on smoothly but in the 5th year many scams came out in open, from here the UPA’s and specially Congress and Manmohan Singh’s credibility started going down. Although Congress led UPA won the elections in 2009, as BJP credibility was all time low, and they projected Advani as PM candidate which was not accepted as good move by general public. Manmohan Singh again became PM, and he became 3rd PM after Nehru & Indira to become PM again after completing 5 year term.
– The first three years of 2nd decade of this century was totally marred by scandals & scams of UPA 2 govt, like Commonwealth Games scam, Coalgate scam, 2G scam, mis handling of Lokpal agitation and many more minor scams and scandals. For almost 3 years, in the Parliament only scams were in the lime light and hardly any other business was transacted. When the time of next elections came in 2014, this time BJP was totally prepared with with Narendra Modi as their PM candidate and Modi campaign vigorously throughout country and BJP led NDA coalition trounced Congress led UPA 2. Congress and other UPA partners lost miserably, with Congress winning only 44 seats, and UPA got only 59. Now PM Modi is doing a reasonably good job of governing India, but the Congress and other opposition Parties like Trinamul Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Aam Aadmi Party have only one agenda to remove Modi, but they have nothing to offer other than freebies. As all these parties are focusing on religion and caste base politics, where as Modi Govt’s policies are generally never based on caste or religion. Over the years politics has become so bad, you are labeled secular when you are talking about welfare of minorities, but as soon as you start talking about Hindutava or majority community you are branded as communal.
But in the end for all the downward trend of polity: we, the pubic, has to also share the burden of this present polity, because the public has not used their voting power sensibly. Most of the public over the years voted for the leaders or political parties which promised more freebies rather than promise of overall development of country and its citizens.
Now in this year’s upcoming general elections, how the politicians and political parties will behave is to be seen.
Waiting for your comments, feedbacks and views.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India,
11th Feb 2019
R. N. Mungale.
Very good analysis indeed.
Bobby
Very good analysis till Modi.