Benito Z Swu
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he BJP learned a hard lesson in the general election of 2003. With A.B Vajpayee spearheading the campaign with the slogan ‘India Shining’ coined by late Pramod Mahajan, everything was going the BJP way. Having won over corporate India and the middle class segment of the Indian cities and towns, big and small, BJP had enough reasons to be confident of victory and yet it lost. Ofcourse it did not help that Godhra happened as elections neared. But what tilted the balance was the alienation of rural India and BJP thus paid the price. In the 2009 general election the indecisive attitude of L.K Advani the BJP’s PM candidate was the main culprit. In trying to be inclusive and please everybody he ended up pleasing nobody and BJP again paid the price. In both the general elections it was the BJP which scored self goals and was not the congress which scored to win. The BJP had learned its lesson the hard way and was never going to make those mistakes again. In the just concluded general election, the core BJP support of the old stayed put while Modi and his core team very successfully were able to woo the vast rural vote segment of India’s heartland. Rahul Gandhi’s tamasha of partaking a meal in a dalit household could hold no water. Infact the dalits felt insulted. The Congress, inspite of the many very expensive flagship projects targeted to the rural voters segment could not even put up a semblance of a fight. It highlighted in its gory best the deficiency of leadership and ideas with the second rung leadership all trying their best in words and deeds to look good in the eyes and ears of the mother-son duo. Infact the Congress party had been rewarding Rahul Gandhi for every failure of his.This high command culture, this sycophancy can never be for the Nagas. Nagas should be very proud of ourselves for having been able to be our own masters. We have been able to prove to ourselves and to others that there is this aspect of ours which will not be compromised come what may. We can congratulate each other over the fact that we have elected a regional party to power for the third consecutive term. I have no apprehensions and second-thoughts when I say that as Nagas there is no honor or face lost in coming under the regional umbrella as we strive together for a common shared future. Human beings by nature usually fails to value what we have at hand and only realizes the quantum of the loss only after we lose it. The image, the writhe, the respect, the identity that Nagas have earned today by being the one and only state in the North-East to prop up a regional government for three consecutive terms with its vote share spiking in the spike-graph after every election must never be diluted just for the sake of political rhetoric of a few. The credit for the success goes to the collective cohesive efforts of all the stakeholders in the DAN government. But fair enough, being the deserving first among equals, Nagas must remain thankful to the living God for giving us a time tested balanced leader of Rio’s caliber. As it stands today Rio has become very important to the NDA’s scheme of things. A little bird told me that instead of limiting Rio with the functioning of a portfolio, he is well on his way for a much bigger role to play.
Today’s time tells us that we have to be very prudent and practical. It is the nature of politics for a political party to win some and lose some. But the complete decimation of a National Party like the Congress cannot be brushed off as a part and parcel of ‘chalta hai’ politics. With assembly elections in Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra scheduled somewhere in October this year and the body language of the ruling congress in these three states looking increasingly gloomy and pessimistic, the defeats would literally be like the proverbial last nail in the coffin of the grand old party. Even Digvijay, the mentor and Chanakya rolled into one for Rahul Gandhi has been able to read the writing on the wall and made public with his statement that Rahul Gandhi is not a leader putting to rest the debate that now remains closed. It is indeed truly very sad that the Congress has been reduced to an almost non-entity begging the NDA government for that space of the ‘Leader of Opposition’ inspite of the number deficit which the Congress would never have consented to had the shoe been in the other foot. The danger for the Congress being relegated and reduced to that of only for sentimental and nostalgic value is very much real today. I, yours truly do not at all relish the sad reality of the Congress today where any student of Political Science can bet their last penny to the fact that just as the sun did indeed set for the British empire, the sun has already set for the Congress party for atleast a long time to come.
Under such a scenario how prudent and wise will it be for us not to recognize the glaring reality of Nagaland being at a cross-road today. Today is a time for our unity to talk. It will be better for we Nagas to not be impulsive inorder to bring a means to an end. Just yesterday I met a friend, one of the rare young, old remaining bachelor after quite some time. I complimented him on the way he has been handling himself lately and he had this to say: “from the time he could remember till date, it has always been either soft criticism or downright order - do this, do that, that’s not how its done, its time to stand on your feet, what about a wife, are you straight etc etc and as such it is indeed very heart warming and reassuring to be at the recieving end of a good compliment.” It made me think and see that the situation has been more or less the same with many of us as well. Because of the cut throat dog eat dog competitive environment of today’s time many of us actually fail to see the positive staring at our face but very easily concord, magnify or even visualize the negatives.
The ‘herd’ mentality and the habit of running with the hare and hunting with the hound is not going to take us anywhere. Not as an individual but as a Naga and for Nagaland, this is not the time to be playing politics. As said in Ecclesiastes, this is a time where every Naga worth his or her salt should stand firmly supporting the Government of the day in every possible way to bring about changes for the better in every aspect of our life and the future generation. As it is we have one too many factions in the underground setup. Nagas today cannot afford to have too many factions in the overground setup as well. The culture of effigy burning and total shutdowns as a means of protest does not serve the purpose in an environment and a state like ours. It makes sense no more and it is all the more senseless when a bandh is exported to a location which have no connection to the cause. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Bannerji mastered the art of total shutdown to her advantage but we have to remember that she always had a populist agenda for the bandhs and moreover followed it up with a rally. As for our dear Nagaland with a population of not more than a colony of a metropolitan city the shutdown culture is not for us. A rally without a shutdown can atleast reflect the extent of support to a cause. As for the Dimapurians, many might not be aware as to the reason for the shutdown.
Why don’t we beat the government of the day for failing to live up to the promises as mentioned in the manifestoes. The yardstick in any democracy anywhere in the world to judge the government of the day is the implementation or non-implementation of the manifesto. The Chief Minister T.R Zeliang during one social gathering in the Capital had lamented about the indifference of the Naga people to the virtue of reading and studying of the election manifestoes of political parties. This indeed is one area which every Naga needs to work upon. The manifesto must become a major criteria for our vote and again the implementation of the said promises in the manifesto should dictate our conscience to either vote for or against. We have to give due weightage to the manifestoes to force the political parties and individual candidates to very seriously look into the written document and be accountable.
