Lok Sabha Poll

Lok Sabha Poll
Election mode has begun to set in. The leadership of the Congress party is anxious
that the elections are held before the economic slow-down begins to bite the mass
of the voters. All over the country thousands of small and hundreds of medium
business enterprises have already closed down. Exports have fallen and imports
are being tightened. The present guess is that the elections will be held in April.
This is the time to have a close look at the political landscape of India.
In 60 years of independence, India has settled down on two issues basic to its
political personality. It is now firmly committed to parliamentary democracy; no
political party nor any cognizable thought-group offers an alternative model of
government. Secondly, though parties and groups demanding and acting for
autonomy of extra-mural geographical or cultural units---be it Kashmir or
Nagaland—India has settled down to the territorial and geographic boundaries
of the republic; its integrity of the two accounts is no longer questioned.
Within these two vital spatialities, volatile changes have occurred in
four ingredients of the State: political parties, social and cultural identities of
its massive population; social, political and moral values, and India’s relations
and interactions with the world.
Any attempt to take a close look at the country’s bodipolitik which is
shaped largely by these four factors interacting with one another must not
miss, nor trivialize, the historic birthmark of symbosis and separation. India
bestowed on the colonial power a respectability it would not have gained
if the traumatic process of the end of empire were national liberation instead
of decolonization or transfer of power.
As the British were allowed to decolonize with transfer of power, the
process of internal declonisation in India has means transfer of power from
the top to the lower reaches of the State, a gradualistic process that is still far
from complete.