INDIA BRUTALLY BRUISED

After this election, India can never be the same again!

The disgraced campaigning, the vulgar polarization, the huge corruption, the naked opportunism, the cruel hate-mongering, the utterly fractured polity and the huge schism in the society, the catapulting of the basest elements to the highest pedestal in politics… will take its gruesome toll.

No matter who wins, India will become ungovernable. The Indian society will for long definitely remain corrupted, disfigured, bruised.

Now, this assumes that the poll results would be as probable and as predictable as should be, not improbably extremist. Here is how:

A: The BJP seems poised to win by a narrow margin, Vajpayee-like dependent upon recalcitrant alliance partners each seeking its pound of flesh. On the one hand, Modi’s bete noire will find a louder voice and on the other, his moral stature will further diminish.

The impact of the tanking economy will become visible. His authoritarian ways will render such a coalition led by BJP unstable. To divert attention new and dirtier games may be played, horse trading [a la Goa, Arunachal] being one.

B: INC may emerge the largest single party and with a network of alliances – pre-poll agreement or post-poll support – scrape through to form a government that will be as hopelessly dependent upon coalition partners as MMS’s was on DMK, Mamata, CPI-M, etc

C: A loose coalition of regional parties forms a govt as weak as that of Deve Gowda or I K Gujral. Mayawati, Banerjee, Naidu, Reddy, Patnaik … each ‘being forced’ by their parties to claim the premiership. Aaya Ram Gaya Ram will become the order.

Extreme possibilities of BJP sweeping back with a majority or INC commanding sizable numbers seem, well, extremely unlikely!

But then surprises are not un-political and we have weeks to go for public opinion to be molded.

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PS:
Personally, I would rather that the BJP leads the govt than stay in opposition with sizable numbers! Guess why?