Elections in today’s date are far different than what they used to be in older times. Today, elections are about only one thing which is winning, it always was no doubt but it has far too much now since it doesn’t matter to the politicians even if somebody dies. To win an election a politician can kill someone, start riots, and can go to any limits.
We have seen huge advertisements during the elections and when the party wins the elections and comes to power they take it back from the money which was supposed to be used for the welfare schemes for the public. Because of this huge money involved in elections nobody from a poor background, no matter how willing he is to serve the people by getting elected, does not win.
Elections Are Just An Opportunity For Crony Capitalism
Elections in India have become like a toxic circle of things revolving in the same manner. The parties take funds from Industrialists, wins the elections, and then returns the favor. Abraham Lincoln said that democracy is the government of the people, for the people, and by the people.
Today none of the three things are there the government is the government of the powerful people, it is for those who have helped the government during the election and it is by the government or a few powerful people.
One bad thing is that liberalization or neo-liberalization happened, capitalism became the core of the economy and politics of the country is that now it is always about the money. Money was always important there is no doubt about that but now is the most essential in process of the formation of the government, it is even more important than the votes of the people that actually decide if somebody will get elected or not.
Voter manipulation, suppression, and buying votes have become an ugly and entrenched part of electoral politics in India.
If you have money, then you can easily go and buy the voters off directly. If it is not possible directly then you just need to give them freebies like a loan waiver or free bus travel. No one is interested in knowing why the farmer had to take the loan in the first place, the loan that this political party is promising to waive off, how did that come on the farmer’s head?
Populism And Communal Tensions Abused By Political Parties
These are the populist measures that the parties use and keep people confused and brainwashed and use them in any way they want. Other populist measures are the use of nationalism as the key, this has been there in the use since always make one particular section of the society hate another and say that you are the sympathizer of them and use them in any sense.
The problem of all this is the lack of education and awareness, we say that a certain government is fascist or a group of people are liberal but how many people know what fascism is? How many people know what communism, fascism, Islam, etc actually mean.
The Role Of Students In Changing Politics In India
The students are the only section of society that actually understands these things and which is why they oppose the governments, this is the only reason why the governments had always been afraid of the students and the questions that the students might ask.
They try to curb their voices, try to seal the education, if there won’t be any cheap education, the poor won’t get educated. If only the rich will study then it is quite obvious that they won’t raise their voices as the majority of them only believe in getting educating and leaving India as soon as possible.
Another problem could be our ignorance, no matter how uneducated we are, how can we assume that if a Muslim talks bad about Hindus or Hinduism then all Muslims are the same, or if a girl is wearing short clothes then she is of fewer morals. By our ignorance, we let these filthy politicians use us, our hate as a tool to spread chaos in society and work for their benefit.
There Is No Alternative
The other thing that is very prevalent in today’s scenario in elections is that the TINA(There Is No Alternative), There is no alternative politics other than projecting one person as a hero and revolving others around it with a flavor of few eye-catching decisions in the public welfare.
Huge advertisements of those decisions make everyone go blind and not see any bad things is the policy that AAP and Kejriwal used and it was used by the BJP and Narendra Modi also.
People always look for their hero than they never could become and project this one person during the election making people go crazy about him and vote for the party ignoring all other bad things.
The Fall Of Mainstream Media
Media is often called the fourth pillar of democracy, we very much rely on the media to give us information and that’s how we give them the power to get in our heads. So now since most of the media network is owned by these industrialists who directly or indirectly are related to the government or want to be in the good books of the government, end up favoring the government in their news.
This has always been there, only problem now is that this time it has completely sold its soul to the devil, and instead of acting as the fourth pillar of democracy, the media under Modi rule is merely acting as PR for the BJP.
The solution to the media problems is the independent media where we pay to watch the news or read it, then only it will no longer be a puppet of industrialists or the governments.