Opinion: Priyanka pitching for new brand of politics

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi is pitching for a new brand of politics. She has set out her thesis at considerable length during her ongoing campaign in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Thrust is on prompting people to hold political parties accountable.

The ongoing Assembly elections afford a golden opportunity for the people to bring their respective States back on the path of new brand of politics. A new politics that will help improve the image and fortunes of their respective States, where focus will be more on issues of concern for the common people. Women’s safety, power supply, jobs for youth, better connectivity, building of infrastructure, besides health and education are the issues, which need to be brought on to the political centrestage.

Politcal parties require to be held accountable. Folly and failure by its greatest guardians and guarantors, the people, to Do so will reduce democracy to a mockery. Votes have to be necessarily cast on the basis of performance. People elect political parties on the basis of their poll planks. At the time of elections, when leaders come to the people seeking votes, they must be asked what they done for them.

Emotive Slogans

Priyanka Gandhi is also insisting on parties contesting elections on values, ideologies and issues, and not on insulting others or such frivolous things, or by raising emotive slogans.

The BJP succeeded in creating minority fears in the majority community. The Saffron Party convinced the majority community that its religion is in danger. When person thinks of religion in an emotional way, then he tends to lose all sense of balance. That is the danger of these outfits.

While the BJP has been playing the Communal Card, the Third Front parties play the Caste Card. These parties are convinced that there is no need for performance, as people vote on Caste and Communal basis.

Development on Backburner

Surprisingly, during the past three decades, notably since the General Election in 1989, issues of concern for the common people have vanished from the political agendas of these Third Front parties and the BJP.

None of the Third Front parties have any credible economic programme, social vision and political goals. For most of them, winning elections and staying in power is the sole ambition. That is where politics begins and ends, for them.

V P Singh was the first to seize upon the Mandal Card, when faced with Kamandal Card of BJP leader L K Advani in 1990, that posed a threat to his National Front Government’s continuance in office. It was almost as a cynical response that V P Singh came up with the announcement of implementing Mandal Commission Report, than as a well-considered policy decision.

Focus on Accountability

It is a novel concept that makes political parties accountable. Focus is brought on the performance of political parties and what they deliver to the people, in actual terms. Most Third Front parties are famous for raising emotive slogans to garner votes and to remain in power. That way, these Third Front leaders manage to get away from the issue of performance.

It also unique, as it aims at undercutting appeal of the caste-based parties and communal parties, by bringing the focus back on performance. A party that is lagging behind in performance, will find it hard to stand scrutiny.

An outright caste-based party, like the Samajwadi Party (SP), can easily get away with lack of performance. Akhilesh Yadav seeks votes on caste appeal. Similar is the case with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Mayawati appeal for votes is again on basis of a community. She cannot spell out what she has done for Dalits, because she has done precious little, apart from caste and communal mobilization.

Sample this. Both Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav remained absent for four-and-a-half years. They woke up, when Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections were round the corner.

Tickets distribution during the elections shows how the two leaders are playing cynically the Caste and Communal Cards, with focus solely on winning elections. While it is important to win elections, what these parties tend to lose sight of is the fact that winning elections is only a means to an end, but not an end in itself.

Constructive Programme

Priyanka Gandhi brought focus back of the Gandhian principle of politics as means of service, than a play of power politics. Such an approach changes the very paradigm of politics.

The Congress stands apart for its approach to politics. Achieving power is not the goal in itself, but that is only a means to an end. The Congress also introduced a viewpoint to see politics as a medium for service and not as a means for pelf and power.

For instance, during the Freedom Struggle, Mahatma Gandhi introduced Constructive Programme. Gandhiji drew up the Constructive Programme, aimed at socio-economic and cultural transformation, alongside the political action plan.

Originally addressing members of the Indian National Congress, through his stress on Constructive Programme,  Gandhiji wanted the Congress men and women to be engaged in the Constructive Programme, along with their political work.

The Constructive Programme covered Hindu-Muslim Unity, Removal of Untouchability, Prohibition, Khadi Promotion, Village Industries, Sanitation Drive and Women’s Education and Empowerment and Basic Education or Nayee Taleem.

According to Gandhiji, every sound political philosophy ought to have its
corresponding Constructive Programme. Such a Programme ought to be one that contributes to the betterment of the lives of the people.

Freedom, A Starting Point

The Congress declared that Independence is just the starting point for political and economic development, social and cultural transformation and renaissance of the spirit.

In fact, the Constructive Programme crowns and completes the edifice of Purna Swaraj, or Complete Independence, by truthful and non-violent means.

During the Emergency from 1975-77, Indira Gandhi came up with the 20-Point Programme. It focused on Implementation of Land Reforms; Abolition of Bonded-Labour;  House-Sites for the Poor; Liquidating Rural Indebtedness; Justice for SCs and STs; Equality and Dignity for Women; and expansion of education. Sanjay Gandhi came up with the 5-Point Programme, covering Adult Education, Dowry Abolition, Tree Plantation, Family Planning and Eradication of Caste System.

Sonia Landmark Work

During the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre from 2004-2014, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, heading the National Advisory Council (NAC), brought about landmark achievements, through the Rights-based architecture.

Sonia Gandhi’s singular achievements include the Right to Information Act, that laid the foundation for the fight against Corruption; Right to Food through the National Food Security Act; Right to Work, through MGNREGA; Right to Education; the Forest-Dwellers Act; and her landmark move to pass the Prohibition of Employment as Manuel Scavengers Act. Besides, under stewardship, rural electrification was expanded, rural and urban poor received greater attention and a staggering 30 crore people were lifted Above the Poverty-Line.

Priyanka Gandhi’s latest pitch for ushering in a new brand of politics may well act as a catalyst for ridding the polity of caste-based and communal parties and make people hold political parties accountable.

Venkat Parsa is a senior journalist and writer based in New Delhi.

Views expressed are personal