Communal peace precondition

THE HUGE victory of the bjp-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the recently concluded General Election 2014, and utter rout of the United Progressive Alliance coalition led by the Congress party (estb.1885) which has ruled in New Delhi for over 60 years in post-independence India, is a historic electoral verdict. Even if unwelcome to many, the people™s judgement merits the respect of all right-thinking people committed to democratic governance. Moreover, it™s pertinent to note that the BJP led by its barnstorming prime ministerial candidate former Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, has won a majority (282 seats) in the Lok Sabha in its own right. However, given the BJP and Modi™s close association with the RSS, the Hindu cultural organisation with a history of Hindu majoritarian assertiveness and anti-Muslim and Christian prejudice, there™s a danger of cadres of associated fringe organisations, even if not Modi and the BJP leadership, interpreting this massive electoral endorsement as a licence to practice crude or subtle majoritarianism and harass religious and caste minorities. It would be in its own and the national interest for the BJP high command ” entrusted with the popular mandate for its promises to revive India™s flagging economy, tame inflation and provide clean and firm governance ” to quickly disabuse its notoriously communal associate organisations of notions of majoritarian triumphalism. Communal peace and harmony is the necessary precondition for delivery of the economic growth and development promise of prime minister Modi. In particular, every care needs to be taken to ensure that the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 in Gujarat which has stained Modi™s governance record, is not replicated in any constituency or corner of India. Moreover, it would be useful for the BJP leadership to note that rather than having won the recently concluded election, it was gifted to them by the Congress. Its clueless leaders wrecked the economy with inflationary giveaways and subsidies while the party™s ministers and rank and file availed the manifold opportunities provided by a weak and delusional leadership to engage in open, continuous and uninterrupted corruption and extortion. Having failed to govern despite a decade of opportunities, the national interest demands this grand old party discards its obsolete socialist nostrums and begins afresh while discharging its duties as a responsible opposition committed to nurturing India™s envied democratic system. Meanwhile, it™s also incumbent upon the country™s effete intelligentsia to encourage rather than ridicule new political parties and formations such as the Aam Aadmi Party, Lok Satta and the Children First Party of India, which have emerged as political responses to the grave challenges rooted in pervasive corruption, maladministration and shameful neglect of abundant human resources, confronting the world™s most populous democracy. For India to attain its full potential and destiny, not only the lotus but other flowers must also bloom. Jettison neta-babu socialism THE SWEEPING victory of the bjp and comprehensive defeat of the Congress party in General Election 2014 offers the new government at the Centre an unprecedented opportunity to exorcise the ghost of neta-babu socialism…