India Is Becoming U S A..... Only In The Elections

We have all heard those promises of our home cities becoming the gorgeous metropolises around the globe. In Kolkata, I have heard my city will become London. I have also seen how Times Square and Dubai pictures have been morphed and called Gandhinagar or Ahmedabad instead. We have, in fact, been very close to the United States in terms of trade and security issues, looking at Uncle Sam as our big brother. But has that helped us in our betterment, or has changed our parliamentary politics into a presidential one, or is in the process?

Let us go back to the past. In 2014, the campaign was in full flow in support of our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The campaign was more based on the charisma of an extremely good orator and populist, backed by some of the best political minds of the country. However, there was some dissent to this:-why the campaign should be in the name of one man, and not in the name of the party? And, no face politics had started way before, by the regional parties, the likes of TMC and AIADMK, for example, in the '16 polls Mamata Banerjee declared herself as the candidate in all the seats in Bengal, asking the people to vote on her name. The Gandhi family had developed this practice for ages. But, the role of Parliament was never trivialized, and the pattern of elections, till then, demanded on other factors than who can be the Prime Minister. Why?

In 2019 elections, the main question that was in favour of BJP was who would replace Mr.Modi? The answer could have been 542 parliamentarians, but most of the parties in NDA were led by faces and not organizations. This is clear that BJP has swept states in Lok Sabha when they have struggled to maintain the majority or has lost in many of the seats. This points out to the fact that face voting has indeed started to play the biggest role in the Indian political scene. And the most unfortunate part is that most of the opposition parties, instead of campaigning in the name of their party, went and tried to beat NDA in their own game, and the result is in front of all of us.

This is dangerous. It needs to change.