I am sure this question is already
in the minds of many concerned citizens as 2014 nears and the pitch by
political parties rises to a frenzy.
Broadly speaking, people are
talking of 3 choices – Congress (led front),
BJP (led front) and the 3rd Front .
As I also tossed this
question in my mind it struck me that it might make things easier if I tried to
work out who I should not vote for.
Over the past few
elections, I have realized that I and
several others like me have been responsible for the governance mess we find
ourselves in owing to our lackadaisical approach to voting, ranging from not
voting at all, to voting casually (for a
candidate whose was know to have little chance of winning), to voting wrong (which,
of course, we realized later. In this
sense, we have not really valued our
vote and the power it give us.
The first and foremost
mistake or defect in the past few elections has been the electorate’s failure
to throw up a decisive mandate both at the centre as well as in many
states, resulting in the cobbling
together of unstable governments held together by local satraps, ever ready to
blackmail the government of the day for “having their way for personal and /or
localized community / communal/caste gains.”
Secondly, we have also voted
for candidates with clear communal, casteist or parochial thinking, which has lowered the quality of our
legislature and put the country several years back in its development path.
With the above in mind, I have worked out the following as my basis
for determining who I will not vote for
and who (out of a basket) that I might vote for.
a) I will not vote for any of the communal / casteist /parochial
parties like Samajwadi Party, BSP, Shiv
Sena, MNS, DMK, Muslim League, RJD, LJP, JMM etc.
b) I will only vote for either Congress or BJP to ensure
that a National Party comes to Power not bound by regional, parochial,
casteist or communal pulls and pressures
and the party in power has a clear mandate or has to rely on minimal support from “khudra” parties.
Between
the two, Congress or BJP, I will vote for the “better candidate” based on his/her past record or “known image” if it is a new candidate.
In other words,
out of the 2 parties that are there in my “voting basket” I will make the final choice based on the
quality of the candidate, rather than my ideological/personal inclination towards one party over the
other. This will help ensure that
whoever we send to parliament/State legislatures are uniformly of a certain
minimum quality. Therefore, I will not
vote for a candidate against whom there are pending criminal cases, irrespective of the fact he/she belongs to
“my preferred party”
This
will also send a good message to aspiring candidates, that whether or not there
is a law that bars them from standing for elections or occupying their seat, if they have a criminal case registered against them we, the citizens, are going to “enforce our own law” viz., that if you have a criminal case pending
against you, you are not going to get
our support.
c) If the Congress or BJP candidate in my constituency
is a complete disaster either on the corruption or criminalization front, then only will I move to other parties i.e.
parties other than in Group A above.
I hope some of you will find
the above basis worth considering.
In
any case, my purpose is to provoke thinking and debate on this question well in
time so that we as citizens discharge our duties responsibly if we are to avoid
the disaster we have had for the past 10 years of unbridled corruption,
back-breaking inflation, rising
unemployment steady weakening of India’s
economy, and increasing bullying by our neighbours and some of the Western
Powers like USA & UK, threatening our economic freedom, territorial
integrity and national sovereignty.
