Rash Behari Bose (1886-1945) was one of the great revolutionaries of the first half of the 20th century..
How BJP-Congress misread 2004 and 2009 results, India paid the price

All round scams,corruption, no new jobs, high inflation,
negative industrial growth, depleting forex reserves and general
hopelessness is what describes India of 2013. What a fall from the
days of this century being dubbed as India's century.
I am arguing in this column that this is a direct result of the
2004 and 2009 elections results being misread by both Congress and
BJP.
Let us start with 2004...
Myths
1) That 2004 was a crushing defeat for BJP and resounding
victory for Congress
2) It was a failure of India Shining campaign and therefore a vote
against reforms
3) Even if remotely, 2002 Gujarat riots were to be blamed for BJP's
loss
Reality
1) Congress won only 7 seats more than BJP, so it wasn't a
resounding vote for Congress or against the rule of NDA.
2) If you look at the elections results closely, BJP's loss was
primarily on account of the party losing it's base in UP (which
gave it 58 seats earlier and only 10 in 2004) and NDA losing allies
like DMK. So the cause prima facie seem to be loss of UP and of
some key allies like DMK and not reforms or 2002 Gujarat riots.
Impact of misreading 2004 results was that Congress and Sonia
Gandhi took this as a vote against the brilliant reforms that NDA
carried out and as a result, focused entirely on so called
"inclusive growth" (an euphemism for povertarianism) and dumped
reforms almost entirely. So UPA-I was not only wasted on reforms
push but also came out with regressive schemes like MNREGA and Farm
Loan waiver.
Not only Congress but BJP too assessed 2004 results similarly and
became apologetic of NDA reforms, or handling of 2002 Gujarat
riots. This of course resulted in an opposition which was in a
disarray, confused and which didn't oppose UPA on regressive
socialist measures like MNREGA or farm loan waiver.
Indians meanwhile were still hungry for more free-market reforms
but were more than content with the smokescreen created by very
high growth experienced during the period, although this growth was
entirely a result of earlier NDA reforms and global factors.
Amidst this background and out of nowhere, the dysfunctional
Manmohan Singh, with objective of leaving a lasting legacy (UPA-II
was nowhere in the picture then and he would have seen UPA-I as his
final term), stuck his neck on the Nuclear deal which although
Congress seemingly not being too convinced about, backed it for the
sake of Sardarji. BJP, forgetting that NDA itself tried for such a
deal and as right wing should have supported being pro-American,
opposed the deal vehemently for the sake of opposition. And what a
disaster! BJP didn't calculate that the middle class India is
emphatically pro-America (wasn't there a survey?) and didn't
realize that much of its base comes from middle class urban
India.
Cut to 2009 elections which where fought on back of a period of
high growth, low inflation (out of 5 years of UPA-I rule, only in
last 10 months the Inflation was higher and hence supposedly
ignored by electorate) India story still supposedly intact,
recently concluded Nuclear deal, still "Mr. Clean" Manmohan Singh
at helm (remember, UPA-I scams like 2G, CoalGate were not yet
exposed) and the alternate on offer being Mr. Advani.
Myth of 2009 : That the resounding victory of
Congress was because of populist measures of MNREGA and Farm Loan
waiver.
Reality: If you look at the results closely, almost all the
incremental seats of Congress were from urban areas, previously
held by BJP. Now the urban areas were not the beneficiaries of
MNREGA or Farm Loan Waiver, so why did they vote for Congress? My
hypothesis is that urban India voted for Congress in drove because
of high growth (although not to the credit of UPA but nevertheless)
and surprise surprise, Nuclear deal. Middle class India got sold on
Manmohan Singh's false promise that Nuclear deal will solve India's
electricity deficit( has it since 5 years?) and which saw this as
coming closer to Amreeka) was disappointed (or disgusted) with
BJP's (opportunistic) opposition to the deal. And the rest as they
say, is history...
The result of 2009 results being misread by Congress was that it
became even more brazen in its corruption, more socialistic in its
schemes (RTE, FSB and what not) and now completely abandoned
reforms. The cock was back and within no time (in 4 years to be
precise) India was staring at a 1991 like crisis!
BJP has already paid the price of misreading the results, India too
has heavily paid and next in line is Congress, which may in fact
get decimated forever. But the question is, will India be able to
redeem itself and rise from the ashes?
We will see in 2015-16, if not in 2014.
Author : Prakash Sharma | Follow twitter.com/Prakash_Sharma
ProFreedom, Centrist, liberal, Atheist. IITD, DCE Alumni
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