The Goan electorate is still limping back to recovery after suffering a political stroke within 24 hours of the election results to the Goa Legislative Assembly 2017 being declared. Whether it has been a ‘vijay’ for democracy or for Hindutva fascism is yet to be realised.
26 Mar, 2017, 06:54PM IST
By Soter D’Souza
The Goan electorate is still limping back to recovery after suffering a political stroke within 24 hours of the election results to the Goa Legislative Assembly 2017 being declared. Whether it has been a ‘vijay’ for democracy or for Hindutva fascism is yet to be realised. Goan politics is not a stranger to such benign looking U-turns by elected representatives in public interest to pre-empt the possibility of a Catholic Chief Minister emerging. There is nothing to be shocked about political turncoats and turnarounds as the country is in a time of abnormal politics which is being aggressively marketed as normal. Abnormal politics compels abnormal behaviour from politicians; like claiming to take the country or Goa forward when actually it is being pushed backwards. Abnormal politics can only flourish in an abnormal society, and so civil society is under an illusion that street corner protests – which appear more about boosting the activist brand image and USP – are healthy for democracy when in reality they only end up enabling the abnormal political system.
The reluctance of the ex-Goa Forward Party president to elaborate on the exact reasons for his quitting from the primary membership of the party to save himself the ridicule of being painted as a theoretician is perfectly reflective of the quality of political culture in the State. It’s about being ‘street smart’ and focused on the self for today wherein display of ideals and principles are of the limited edition variety for public consumption only during elections or at protest rallies. The hypocrisy is such that one politician gets accused of bathing in a raincoat and emerging clean from corruption by another politician who himself possesses the sophisticated art of wearing a condom and wallowing in filth only to emerge unstained and unsoiled.
Every political crime or aberration needs to construct a noble and glorified narrative around it as a justification. The nation witnessed this after the 2002 genocide in Gujarat which got celebrated with a Gujarat Gaurav Yatra. The Hindutva fascists can never be politically wrong, at least in public. It is always the liberals and the left who are considered as the demons. And so, we have a fairy tale narrated to gullible Goans about how Luizinho and Digvijay messed it up for Goa. Any anti-Congress tale is relished by the public without thinking. When the tale is seen to get a little stale we have a recycled version with Girish as the new villain.
Not surprisingly, when it comes to the Congress the CM is expected to be instantly declared within 24 hours, but for the BJP there is a strange relaxation of this norm to 8 days even after securing a 2/3rd majority as in UP and Uttarakhand. There can be five contenders for the CM’s post in the BJP and yet it is considered healthy, but five Congress ex-CMs as contenders for the post gets marketed as infighting. Strange logic in abnormal politics, isn’t it? Similarly, when it comes to corruption the yardstick for measuring it gets adopted depending upon which party is in power. For the Congress the scale gets calibrated as per western standards, while for the others it is ‘desi’ or ‘stone-age’ standards which are made applicable.
Whether we like it or not, politics today is about investment and returns. Politics is a business and no more social work. Elections are not won with love and fresh air but with money. This is substantiated by the fact that around 60% of the candidates in the recent Goa polls were crorepatis and all MLAs currently elected are crorepatis. Who invests on which politician is hardly known. As usual trade secrets never get discussed in public domain. Besides obliging his political funders with favours and concessions, an MLA also has to also build a corpus fund for the next elections. In such a scenario, with BJP in control of the Union’s coffers and the State coffers being empty and with a huge public debt, which non-BJP political party with no clear mandate would think it wise to invest or trade in cobbling up the required numbers to stake their claim to form the government?
The electorate too cannot absolve itself from abetting the political mess. At the end of five years an MLA hardly gets any grace marks in his performance assessment for loyalty to party, upholding principles and adhering to ethical politics. What seems to win the day for an MLA is his ability to satisfy jungle instincts, haywire development, doles, being at the beck and call of public 24x7 and providing sponsors and goodies. In the absence of transparent and specific constituency-wise budgetary allocations, the constituencies of the opposition MLAs are deliberately starved for development in order to generate frustration among the people. The ‘amchim kamam zaunk zai” (our work) phrase sums up the expectations of the citizens. How the MLA fulfills these public’s expectations becomes nobody’s concern. So in a way, there is nothing black and white for morality in political betrayals and compromises as it is all justified under the pretext of ensuring the ‘kamam’ or development demanded by the constituents. In a way, the politics playing out is only a prototype of the larger abnormality prevailing in Goan society.
http://www.heraldgoa.in/Review/Voice-Of-Opinion/Goans-suffer-a-political-stroke/113148.html
http://www.epaperoheraldo.in/Details.aspx?id=27051&boxid=44652709&uid=&dat=3/26/2017
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