Editor,
According to the godi media, while the BJP is the current favourite, the opposition is beleaguered.
Now the billion-dollar is, the BJP is the current favourite of whom or which sector?
The bhakt journalists must keep this hard fact in mind: be it in 2014 or 2019, more than 60 percent of Indians (who had exercised their franchise) had not voted for the winning party.
So the BJP might be the ‘favourite party’ of the elite, privileged, upper middle class and Hindutva fanatics harbouring ugly feelings of Islamophobia, it has not won the hearts of the majority of this secular, multilingual, multi-religious heterogeneous nation.
The majority of the nation is simply fed up with the free-flowing communal antics and absolute failure in all sectors of governance over a decade. Still, success is being attained at the national level just because the opposition votes are getting divided instead of getting cast in favour of a particular secular party.
Since Indian democracy is based on the ‘first past the post’ principle, the number one party in numerical count holds every constitutional right to place itself on the seat of governance; but never can the party and it’s leaders or bhakts boast about its popularity as ‘nationwide’ or ‘universal’.
And even if the opposition is ‘beleaguered’, at the end of the day, the fact remains that the who’s who of the dispensation in power are much perturbed about them leading to constant character-assassination of the Gandhis to Mamata Banerjees, Hemant Sorens to Arvind Kejriwals, and eagerly embrace the leaders from the much-hated ‘corrupt’ and ‘dynastic’ parties within the saffron fold.
If a sane secular electorate together vote in favour of the strongest candidate in the opposition (irrespective of his/her party affiliation) in all constituencies around the nation, the who’s who of the ruling dispensation and bhakts of godi media will have much surprise waiting for them on the day of counting.
Remember the hype around ‘India Shining’ and the damp squib thereafter in 2004.
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata