ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಪ್ರಗತಿಪರತೆ ವಿಫಲವಾದದ್ದೆಲ್ಲಿ?
ಕಳೆದ ತಿಂಗಳು ಹೊರಬಿದ್ದ 2019ರ ಲೋಕಸಭಾ ಚುನಾವಣಾ ಫಲಿತಾಂಶ ಇಂದಿಗೂ ಚರ್ಚೆಯಲ್ಲಿದೆ. ದೇಶದ ಇತರೆ ರಾಜ್ಯಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕಂಡು ಬಂದ ಫಲಿತಾಂಶಗಳಿಗಿಂತ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕವೂ ಸೇರಿದಂತೆ ದಕ್ಷಿಣ ರಾಜ್ಯಗಳ ಫಲಿತಾಂಶಗಳು, ಬಹುತೇಕ ರಾಜಕೀಯ ಪಂಡಿತರನ್ನು ಅಚ್ಚರಿಗೊಳಿಸಿದ್ದು ಸುಳ್ಳಲ್ಲ.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and his party have scored a second general election victory. It has stunned pundits and political analysts across the board. Given the tumultuous period of the last five years under Modi’s style of governance, it was expected that at these 2019 elections the BJP would find it difficult to sell its divisive ‘saffron’ agenda based on reactionary Hindutva ideology.
Of the 900 million electorate across India, voters have in fact boosted their support for the BJP to 38 per cent, resulting in 303 seats, compared with 31 per cent of the popular vote in 2014 and the 282 seats.
Unprecedentedly, the BJP has got more than half of the votes polled in at least 13 states – 69 per cent in Himachal Pradesh, 62 per cent in Gujarat, 60 per cent in Uttarakhand, 58.5 per cent in Rajasthan, 58 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, 58 per cent in Haryana, 57 per cent in Delhi, 51.4 per cent in Karnataka, 51 per cent in Uttar Pradesh and 51 per cent in Jharkhand.
Narendra Modi is the first prime minister to return to power winning a bigger vote share for the party and enjoying a full single-party majority in the Lok Sabha parliament since Jawaharlal Nehru’s victory in 1957! Back then, Nehru’s Congress improved its vote share by 2.79 percentage points over its 1951-52 polls.
Unstable democracy
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may suffer from memory loss, but we the people – the ruled – unfortunately have very strong memories. The last five years of Modi’s abhorrently casteist, brutally capitalist and cut-throat communal regime have rammed home clearly: how not to govern a country of 1.34 billion people. It is nevertheless hard to believe the cacophony with which the rich and powerful, and even the middle classes, are rooting for Modi’s return to power.
Undoubtedly India’s recent 48 hour General Strike in January 2019, when nearly 220 million workers, peasants, agricultural labourers, street vendors etc. struck work will go down in history as a record-breaking one. Interestingly the previous record for largest general strike was also held by India’s working class, when 180 million participated in a General Strike in September 2016, against the disastrous economic policies of the current Modi regime.
In the Karnataka Legislative Assembly election of 12th May, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got eight seats short of the halfway mark but won the “prize.” Its party leader, B.S.Yeddyurappa, who has previously spent time in prison, got to be sworn in as the new Chief Minister. He “enjoyed” the throne for just 55 hours. The BJP had made a bid to usurp power but had to give way unceremoniously, even before a test on the floor of the house to prove its majority.
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